The macroscopic laws of diffusion were laid down for the case of liquids by Adolf Fick 150 years ago who realised the analogy of diffusion and heat conduction. 100 years ago Einstein and Smoluchowski put up the equation named after these scientists teaching us how to trace down the motion of a single diffusing particle and thus to understand long time unexplained Brownian motion as a fluctuatio...

The theory of diffusion is one of the prevailing theories on the explanation of the quality of dissemination of innovations, expansion of ideas and thoughts in the area of culture.The present research is an attempt to respond to this question: Is it possible to disseminate the Islamic Revolution values and ideals through the window of Abrahamic Hajj into the world of Islam? And if the res...

in mullā ṣadrā’s view, there are three general worlds of existence: 1. world of the senses, i.e. this world, 2. world of ideas, i.e. the world of quantity forms, which is exactly like the world of the senses, with the difference that it is free from matter, and 3. world of intelligibles, which is free from matter and material properties. on the other hand, man has three types of perceptions: 1....

Culturally counterintuitive concepts are ideas that violate a small number of justifiable expectations raised by shared beliefs of a group of people. Previous studies have shown that ideas that violate a small number of expectations are better remembered by people than ideas that conform to their expectations or ideas that violate a large number of people’s expectations. However, as counterintu...

We would like to acknowledge financial support of INSEAD and the University of Texas and the comments of Frank Dobbin and other members of the working group on the International Diffusion of Democracy and Markets. Andrew Spicer has been an important inspiration for many of the ideas in this paper. 2 Abstract The diffusion of economic ideas is often attributed to a homogenization of world cultur...

Theories of the diffusion of ideas in social psychology converge on the assumption that shared beliefs (e.g., social representations, rumours and legends) propagate because they address the needs or concerns of social groups. But little empirical research exists demonstrating this link. We report three media studies of the diffusion of a scientific legend as a particular kind of shared belief. ...