Foundational Papers in Complexity Science pp. 1299–1328
DOI: 10.37911/9781947864535.44
Weak Ties and the Origins of Network Science
Author: Duncan J. Watts, University of Pennsylvania
Excerpt
“The Strength of Weak Ties” is—I believe without exaggeration—the most cited paper ever published in a sociology journal, and one of the most influential papers ever written by a sociologist, especially among complexity scientists.
But what is it about? I suspect, although I cannot prove, that many people who cite the paper have not read it carefully. If they did, they might be surprised to learn that it is almost entirely qualitative in nature. No formulas, and only a handful of statistics, are presented to support the arguments. There are also only two figures: one, comically simple, showing a “forbidden triad” (a missing edge between two nodes, B and C, both of whom have strong ties to a third node A); and a hand-drawn schematic of a “local bridge” (an edge between two nodes, A and B, which, if deleted, would result in a shortest path length d(A,B) greater than two).
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