Peter Turchin @ Beyond Belief

Posted by on March 5, 2009; This entry is filed under Uncategorized.
Share on FacebookShare on Google+Email this to someoneTweet about this on Twitter

If you haven’t read any of Peter Turchin’s work, his presentation (video) at Beyond Belief is a reasonable precis.

One Comments

  1. mnuez March 5th, 2009 at 9:19 pm

    I’m not gonna lie, I literally can not hear the word “instabilitya” often enough. :-) 
     
    So far as statistics relevant to modern internecine deaths are concerned however, I have to wonder whether Gregory Cochran might have a point of view worth considering as we study what he calls “history” but what is really the modern globe (you and I are more biologically similar to Sargon than to Idi Amin). Any wide-ranging scientific sociological study of history should consider whether or not there are major difference between the social structure of countries as diverse as Iceland, the United States, Israel and Congo.  
     
    I can’t really fault Peter for this lacuna though being as he states quite specifically – and somewhat convincingly – that the sociological basis for widespread cooperation is based more on religion/ideology than on any specific biological basis (let’s not forget that the axial age showed itself over quite a wide range of peoples). 
     
    In any case, this was an interesting introduction to Peter and I appreciate your sharing it. (I’m not sure how much of this is novel though. The attempt to come to specific scientific conclusions as regards theories of history seems worthy but he hasn’t quite laid out how he intends to do that or even how that can theoretically be done.)

a