Peter Turchin
is a complexity scientist who works in the field of historical social science that he and his colleagues call: Cliodynamics
When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable
From the pioneering co-founder of cliodynamics, the groundbreaking new interdisciplinary science of history, a big-picture explanation for America’s civil strife and its possible endgames
His research interests lie at the intersection of social and cultural evolution, historical macrosociology, economic history,
mathematical modeling of long-term social processes, and the construction and analysis of historical databases.
How do human societies evolve?
Why do we see such a staggering degree of inequality in effectiveness of governance and economic performance among nations?
Currently he investigates a set of broad and interrelated questions: In particular, what processes explain the evolution of ultrasociality—our capacity to cooperate in huge anonymous societies of millions?
Building a Historical and Archaeological Database
Peter’s main research effort at the moment is directed at coordinating the Seshat Databank —a massive historical database of cultural evolution that is gathering and systematically organizing the vast amount of knowledge about past human societies, held collectively by thousands of historians and archaeologists.
Read Cliodynamica: a Blog about the Evolution of Civilizations
