Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another, a non-fiction book by English chemist and physicist Philip Ball originally published in 2004, discusses the concept of a "physics of society".

Ball discusses thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, Lewis Mumford, Emyr Hughes, and Gottfried Achenwall who have attempted to apply (or argue against the use of) physics, chemistry, or mathematics in the study of mass social phenomena.

[1] The outlines of Ball's Critical Mass, the most popular of his many noted books, beginning in various circa 2001 lectures, talks, and articles focused on what he calls a 'physics of society', similar to the social physics in the Auguste Comte sense, a subject Ball approaches using statistical mechanics viewing people as atoms or molecules that show characteristic behaviours in bulk.

"[1] Nearly as soon as he gives this definition, however, Ball falls back on the two biggest hurdles to this perspective: that of the theories of being alive and of free will, both of which seem to contradict the physics viewpoint.

Other topics discussed in the book include the business cycle, random walks, phase transitions, bifurcation theory, traffic flow, Zipf's law, Small world phenomenon, catastrophe theory, the Prisoner's dilemma.