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Promoting discussion and collaboration in social and cultural evolution
The Social Life of Periodical Cicadas
2013 is the Year of the Cicada – at least in my home state of Connecticut. Every 17 years certain parts of the state are overrun by millions of these remarkable insects. Their Latin name, Magicicada septendecim (the 17-year magical cicada) says it all. Last time cicadas emerged (17 years ago) I was out of […]
Posted in: Blogs
The Future Cliodynamics of the Great Divergence (AKA the Rise of the West)
June 7, 2013
by Peter Turchin
One of the major reasons I enjoy having a blog is the many excellent comments that the readers make on various ideas I float here. Sometimes they make me change my views, sometimes they force me to explain things better, or clarify my own thinking on the subject. All of this happened as a result […]
Posted in: Blogs
The Rise of the West: Science and Ideology
June 3, 2013
by Peter Turchin
When I switched my research interests from biology to social sciences and history, one big adjustment I needed to make was to learn how to deal with heavily ideologized or politicized subjects. Politics, of course, intrudes everywhere (after all, as Aristotle said, humans are political animals), but compared to biology most social sciences are veritable […]
Posted in: Blogs
Another Nail in the Coffin: Poverty Point
May 28, 2013
by Peter Turchin
In the two previous blogs I have been proceeding under the assumption that the standard ‘bottom-up’ theory is a bankrupt paradigm. (As a reminder, the standard theory says that agriculture came first and created conditions – production of ‘surplus’ – that made complex, large-scale societies possible, indeed, inevitable.) But so far I have only cited one […]
Posted in: Blogs
Why Become a Farmer?
May 20, 2013
by Peter Turchin
The previous blog discussed Göbekli Tepe, which achieved a surprisingly high level of social complexity before the adoption of agriculture. In the language of philosophy of science, Göbekli Tepe is an anomaly for the reigning paradigm in theoretical archaeology, which posits that the adoption of agriculture was the pre-condition for, or even the cause of, […]
Posted in: Blogs
Complex Societies before Agriculture: Göbekli Tepe
May 17, 2013
by Peter Turchin
A week or two ago I was sitting in a doctor’s office, when I realized that I forgot to bring any readings with me. As I was idly rifling through the usual stack, my roving eye was suddenly arrested by a cover of a two-year old National Geographic, which proclaimed THE BIRTH OF RELIGION: The […]
Posted in: Blogs
June 16, 2013
by Peter Turchin
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