It’s common to borrow terms from the physical sciences and apply them to other domains. A football team can gain momentum during a game. People tend to cling to habits because they have inertia. A software development team tracks its velocity. When we investigate the nature of the interactions of individuals in a group, we talk about self-assembly and self-organization.
I suppose there’s no harm in this, provided we remember we’re using metaphor and we remain aware of the context. As the saying goes, "The map is not the territory." Continue reading Elevator etiquette and self-organization