Physicists, stamp collectors, human mobility forecasters

The Hungarian version of this article was published in Budapest Review of Books (BUKSZ, 2010/Fall).

Abstract

One of the two reviewers studied in high school to be a physicist. In the end, he became something else, but he never lost his awe of physics. The other reviewer never intended to become a physicist, but he sometimes asks himself why he didn’t become one. Today, they are both sociologists who practice their science on an action theory basis and believe that regularities exist in the world of social actions which can be perceived, understood, explained – and even used for making predictions.