Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

On understanding the algebra of history

Over the years I’ve convinced many people to read Scott Atran’s In God’s We Trust. Why? Because it gives you a basic framework for understanding and interpreting religious phenomena.

The cognitive anthropological toolkit does not give you the total resources of decomposing religious phenomena. But, it is probably a necessary toolkit to begin at the process of carving it up tractably. And since people talk about religion constantly I think it is important that learn to talk about it more rationally and empirically.

I believe my friend Peter Turchin is doing something similar with cliodynamics, which attempts to model history formally and quantitatively. Unlike classical cliometric analysis, which was mostly descriptive, Peter attempts to construct models which make predictions which can be tested.

Of course to test these models you need well organized data. To do this he has been instrumental in pushing forward the Seshat: Global History Databank (which I have supported with a donation).

Cliodynamics is a few decades behind cognitive anthropology as a field. I’m still following it closely because it hasn’t hit the point of diminishing returns for me yet.

I’m putting this post up mostly because on Twitter someone mentioned offhand that more people should know of Peter’s work.

Well, here I am boosting him up a bit! Of his books, I’ve read three related to history, War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall, and Secular Cycles. For those who are curious about Peter’s ecological scholarship, Complex Population Dynamics may be of interest.

Also, here are my 10 questions for Peter Turchin.

And of course, you should checkout his website.

One thought on “On understanding the algebra of history

  1. Whoa. A modest ambition, eh, Turchin? Well, somebody’s gonna try it, so why not you, right? Since, with exponentially multiplying computational power, the sky is indeed the limit. I will check into your work! There may be a Nobel in this when all is said and done. Good luck to all, we could use it.

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