Your society’s cultural memory follows the same laws of physics as a snowflake or a crystal.
April 15, 2026
Original Paper
Beyond Narrative: The Semangram Hypothesis and the Thermodynamic Architecture of Collective Memory
SSRN · 6494338
The Takeaway
We tend to think of history and culture as a series of random stories or conscious choices made by people over time. This paper argues that collective memory actually behaves like a thermodynamic system, forming stable 'attractors' similar to physical pattern formation in biology. It introduces the 'Semangram' to show why societies get stuck in certain ways of thinking and why some ideas are structurally silenced regardless of their merit. This means that breaking a cultural taboo or changing a national narrative isn't just a social challenge—it is like trying to fight the physical laws of nature that keep a system in its current state. Our 'meaning landscapes' are built on a thermodynamic architecture that resists change.
From the abstract
Contemporary social sciences possess increasingly sophisticated tools for diagnosing collective pathologies, polarization, ecological disengagement, systemic apathy, yet remain structurally underpowered when it comes to designing interventions. This paper argues that this diagnostic-interventive gap is not merely methodological but ontological: we lack an adequate structural unit for analyzing collective meaning at the level where lock-ins actually form and persist. To address this, we introduce