HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Scott Archer Boorman (born February 1, 1949) is a mathematical sociologist at
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
.


Life

His father, Howard L. Boorman, was a Foreign Service Officer in
Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...
, China, and he was born there as Chinese Communists troops entered the city. He received no formal education before enrolling at
Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...
, and had largely completed work on his book, ''The Protracted Game'', which was published in 1971. He earned his B.A. in Applied Mathematics, and was a Harvard Junior Fellow. He received his Ph.D. in
Sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...
from Harvard University and was appointed to a full professorship at Penn before moving to Yale. He is also a graduate of
Yale Law School Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United ...
.


Works

While still a teenager, Boorman wrote ''The Protracted Game : A Wei-Ch'i Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy

(1969), an analysis of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He shows that the U.S. thought it was playing
Chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...
, while in fact the game was Wei-Ch'i (also known as Go). He systematically explores the similarity between the military strategies of Chinese Communist insurgency and the Chinese board game wei-ch’i, in contrast to parallel U.S. analyses of the same events. Boorman also argues that wei-chi's analysis of a strategic system presents a more sophisticated and flexible form of
game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed ...
than the traditional western models of strategic choice. His book, ''Genetics of Altruism'' (1980) uses mathematical population genetics to analyze the development of sociality and altruism through three modes of selection: group, kin and reciprocity.


Notes


External links


Faculty website at Yale

List of publication
* http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20050605_1.htm -(Quotes a James Pinkerton editorial invoking ''The Protracted Game'') American sociologists Yale Law School alumni 1949 births Living people Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Yale University faculty {{US-sociologist-stub