(remind to self: post about inevitability of increasing inequality in society)

Is the current state of positive social science that different from natural science?

-Repeatability: Meteorology?
-Complexity: Thermodynamics?
-Ideal types: Ideal gas? Simple harmonic motion?
-Adaptive behaviour/observer effect: Zoology?

There appears to be many problems that surround the study positive social sciences, which are not present in the study of natural sciences. With a suitable choice of examples, it is possible to show that the two disciplines are so different in their fundamental nature that the method applied by one would not work for the other. However, the contrary may also be achieved by a different choice of examples.

There is a problem of complexity. Each human being has a complex structure. As with many-body problems in physics, even with simple underlying principles governing the interactions between the bodies, when the number of interacting bodies goes above three, the resultant behaviour may be so complicated that the equations of motion cannot be solved analytically. What more, with each body being so complex on its own, and the interactions being even more difficult to understand, how can we possibly come up with any understanding of the human society?

Let consider a box of gas. Each atom has a complex structure. When molecules collide, the resultant behaviour is due to the interactions between their electron clouds and their nuclei. Even when the molecules do not collide, every electron has a non-zero probability of being anywhere in the box, such that we can consider a box of gas as a scenario where every molecule interacts with all other molecules at once. Now, it is highly likely that a box of gas would contain more molecules than the entire world population. Yet, why is it that reliable models can be made for the behaviour of gases?

Some phenomena that do not arise on the small scale start to appear on the large scale. One example is temperature. Temperature is a concept that arises from the simultaneous exchange of energy between a large number of molecules of the system with the molecules of another body. Pressure is another. It is caused by the force exerted by a large number of molecules on the walls on the container. However, the concepts of pressure and temperature are not relevant when one is describing molecules themselves. Hence, on an molecular scale, it may be difficult to discover simple laws that describe the properties of a large number of gas molecules, because the properties that hold simple relationships to each other do not appear at the molecular scale.

So could it simply be that on a human scale, it is difficult to discover properties of societies? Or is it that the large scale properties that hold simple relationships to each other have not been defined or discovered yet? Bear in mind that some properties of gases in thermodynamics, such as entropy and free energy, are not exactly intuitive or obvious properties to discover. Or could it be that human behaviour is so much more complicated than atoms and molecules that it would forever be impossible to find simple laws on the large scale? I'm not sure if the answer can be easily given in one paragraph.