 ‘Atomism’ is taken fairly literally by theories that apply the methods of statistical physics to society. The idea is to model societies as large aggregates of people, much as liquids and gases are aggregates of molecules, or ant colonies aggregates of ants. Historical examples include Quetelet’s On the Social System of 1848 and Spencer 1895. Contemporary representatives include models in sociophysics and econophysics (see Chakrabarti et al. 2007). The simplest of these models take individual interactions to be governed by deterministic rules, and take a society or market to be an aggregate of these interacting individuals.