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Browsing All posts tagged under »cliodynamics«
How to Become a Cliodynamicist
Every once in a while I get an e-mail from students interested in a career in cliodynamics. What kind of courses does one need to take, and what is the possible career path that could lead to cliodynamics research? Let’s start by acknowledging that there are no departments of cliodynamics – and it is quite […]
How to Overthrow an Empire – and Replace It with Your Own
April 17, 2013 by Peter Turchin
Imagine … You are an heir of a Noble House. Your enemies, who include the emperor and a powerful noble, have assassinated your father and destroyed your House. You have escaped, but you have no loyal retainers, no troops, no allies, and no money. You want revenge! But you also want to rebuild your […]
Scientific Prediction ≠ Prophecy
April 12, 2013 by Peter Turchin
Yesterday Wired published an article by Klint Finley, Mathematicians Predict the Future With Data From the Past. Apart from a couple of minor details Klint does a good job explaining the goals and the methods of Cliodynamics. However, he (or his editor; it is almost always editors who come up with titles) couldn’t resist injecting […]
Cutting through the Thicket of Economic Forces (Why Real Wages Stopped Growing II)
April 7, 2013 by Peter Turchin
In the previous blog I asked why real wages stopped growing in the 1970s. A host of explanations has been discussed by economists and political commentators (although they tend to focus on the related issues of income and income inequality). David Leonhard, for example, listed 14 possible causes for the income slump during the last […]
Science on Screen: DUNE
March 28, 2013 by Peter Turchin
Frank Herbert’s DUNE is probably the most popular science fiction novel ever (over 12 million of copies sold). It has everything – a complex and dynamic main hero, great villains, neat ecology (planetology!), philosophical and religious insights, and (what is particularly fascinating to me) a well-structured social world. I have written before on this topic […]
The Cliodynamics of Cliodynamics
March 3, 2013 by Peter Turchin
Marc Parry, the author of the Chronicle article on Cliodynamics, reposted the Google Ngram graphs from my last blog on The Percolator. There are about a dozen replies there. One says, “Interesting article sort of but the comments are even more amusing.” These comments remind me of an encounter I had at a Columbia University […]
The Rise and Fall of Cliometrics, and the Coming Rise of Cliodynamics
February 26, 2013 by Peter Turchin
The latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education has two related articles, one on Ian Morris and another on cliodynamics. One interesting theme in the second article is the relationship between cliodynamics and cliometrics. Initially ‘cliometrics’ was a faintly derogatory term used by the detractors of the new economic history that arose in the […]
Game of Predictions
January 2, 2013 by Peter Turchin
The year of 2012 has been a good one for Social Evolution and Cliodynamics. We had a wonderful meeting in Frankfurt that celebrated the new stature of Cultural Evolution. The Social Evolution Forum has been developing very nicely (in the next blog I will provide more information). And the science of Cliodynamics has been adding […]
Call for Papers: The Fourth International Conference on Cliodynamics, Vladivostok (May 20-22, 2013)
December 11, 2012 by Peter Turchin
The Fourth International Conference on Cliodynamics: Mathematical Modeling of Historical and Socioeconomic Processes will be held in Vladivostok (Russian Federation) on May 20-22, 2013 (please note the change of dates from the previous announcement). The Conference will be hosted and supported by the Far Eastern Federal University (Vladivostok). (credit: http://photovladivostok.ru/gallery/vladivostok/13204.htm) The Conference will focus on […]
Does History Cycle?
December 5, 2012 by Peter Turchin
In the Economist’s World in 2013 issue there is an article, The Cycle of History (thanks to John McGonagle for bringing it to my attention). The author, Max Rodenbeck, discusses the recent events of the Arab Spring from the point of view of Ibn Khaldun’s theory. Ibn Khaldun, as many of my readers know, was […]
Collapse of Complex Societies: Did Drought Kill off the Mayans?
November 11, 2012 by Peter Turchin
When I wrote my blog about the effect of climate on the rise and demise of complex societies, I had no inkling that there was another paper on this subject in the works. But the latest issue of Science (9.XI.2012) has an article by Douglas Kennett et al., Development and Disintegration of Maya Political Systems […]
The Rise and Demise of Complex Societies. The Effect of Climate. Science
November 4, 2012 by Peter Turchin
Having your research written about in Science or Nature, or getting your article published in one of these journals (and PNAS) is one of the highlights of a scientist’s career. Competition is pretty fierce, and the editors of these prestigious journals tend to behave in a pretty high-handed manner. Although we complain about it among […]
Michael E. Hochberg and Harvey Whitehouse. To Understand Present Day Cultures We Must Study the Past: a Commentary on David Sloan Wilson
October 15, 2012 by Peter Turchin
David Sloan Wilson’s essay provides ample fodder for provocative discussion on cultural evolution. Are cultural traits adaptations, and if so, at what level(s) of selection? These questions can only be resolved on a case-by-case basis but that will mean we also need to know much more about how cultural traits and groups change over time. […]
Psychohistory and Cliodynamics
September 3, 2012 by Peter Turchin
I am often asked by people who first encounter Cliodynamics whether I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, and what is the relationship between Asimov’s Psychohistory and Cliodynamics. I read Foundation some 35 years ago, and it left quite an impression. I actually begin my popular book War and Peace and War by referring to Hari Seldon […]
Cliodynamics: Can Science Decode the Laws of History? (My article on the Conversation)
August 17, 2012 by Peter Turchin
“When the French Assembly of Notables frustrated attempts by the royal government to fix the state fiscal crisis in 1788, because they did not want to pay taxes, these aristocrats did not intend to trigger the French Revolution, during which many of them ended up guillotined or exiled. Yet this is precisely what happened. When […]
Cliodynamics vs. the Mayan Calendar: Who Wins?
August 11, 2012 by Peter Turchin
The publication of the Feature Article in Nature about my research on American political violence elicited a wave of comments on the Web. The expression ‘feeding frenzy’ comes to mind. I’ve had a lot of fun reading those comments that I came across (and thanks to various people who sent me links). Partly its sheer […]
The Social Evolutionary Roles of Internal versus External Wars
August 9, 2012 by Peter Turchin
Joe Anoatubby raises a number of good points, with many of which I find myself in complete agreement. However, one thing I cannot emphasize too much is that generic violence is not a good conceptual category. We need to look at different sides of it separately, for reasons that actually have a lot to do […]
Joe Anoatubby: Cycles of violence in the United States
August 8, 2012 by SEF Editor
I’ve always made argument with my colleagues and students that there are indeed cyclical patterns in US History. I also believe that part of that phenomenon is related to the reality that younger generations lose touch with the implications of violence and political upheaval as witnessed by those generations that did experience them and who […]
A Feature Article in Nature on Cliodynamics
August 3, 2012 by Peter Turchin
Today’s issue of Nature has a Feature Article by Laura Spinney on cliodynamics. Laura interviewed me when we both attended the Frankfurt Forum on Cultural Evolution (about which I wrote in an earlier blog). I think she did a great job capturing the excitement of our new fledgling discipline and explaining in easy-to-understand language some […]
May 1, 2013 by Peter Turchin
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