Do Stellar Systems Agree with the Singular Evolution of N-Body Systems?

Extract

One of the important jobs of scientists is to formulate new laws and principles, and I have attempted to summarise those we have learnt in this most enjoyable and fruitful symposium in the laws stated below. However, recognising that laws derived from stellar dynamics may lead to important discoveries in other fields, I have translated these laws into the language of sociology. The key concept of hard and soft binaries has been introduced into stellar dynamics by Heggie. If at some point in a stellar system is defined to be then Heggie defines a soft binary to be one whose internal energy has β|ε| < 1 and a hard binary to be one with β|ε| > 1. Heggie's laws cover the interaction of these binaries with the field stars and his first basic discovery is that on interacting with this society hard binaries become harder while soft binaries become softer and may even cease to be binaries at all. The same may be true of criminals in their interaction with society.