Carolina QuotesI began my career... as an ecologist... studying the population dynamics of beetles, butterflies, mice, and deer. ...I embraced the turn of the field to complexity science, which mixes computer modeling with Big Data analytics to answer such questions as... why many animal populations go through boom-and-bust cycles. By the late 1990s... I began to consider how the same... approach could be brought to the study of human societies. A quarter of a century later, my colleagues... and I have built out a flourishing field... cliodynamics (from Clio... the... Greek mythological muse of history, and dynamics, the science of change)...
Peter Turchin Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Preface
- work
- End Times (2023)
- year
- 2023
Cite this record
“I began my career... as an ecologist... studying the populat…” Peter Turchin. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-93CBF94D10. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/93cbf94d10
More from Peter Turchin
Structural-demographic theory was proposed 30 years ago. Although it was successively refined by other theorists... the theoretical core, and especially the emphasis on intra-elite competition and conflict as the most important driver of socio-political instability and state breakdown, remained constant. Over the past three decades, the theory was empirically tested by a growing number of researchers. Currently, there are detailed investigations of at least twenty crises... to test the predictions of the theory... [T]here are several dozen other less detailed examples. The... verdict is that.. predictions are well supported by data. ...[R]ival theories are not supported.
[T]here are important recurring patterns... throughout... human history over the past ten thousand years.
[M]y colleagues and I... focused on cycles of political integration and disintegration, particularly on state formation and state collapse.