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In an ambitious leap forward for the scientific understanding of human societal evolution, Peter Turchin, a leading complexity scientist, unveils groundbreaking insights in his new book, The Great Holocene Transformation.…

L’anthropologue Peter Turchin a étudié 700 sociétés sur dix mille ans d’histoire. Il en dégage des grands facteurs d’instabilité parmi lequel : l’appauvrissement des classes populaires, la surproduction d’élite, une baisse de la confiance et une explosion de la dette.…

Can there be a science of history? Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series proposed an elite cadre of “psychohistorians” who could predict the future; in Peter Turchin’s End Times (Allen Lane), the proposed science of “cliodynamics” (after Clio, the Greek muse of history) is less confident of precise prediction but nonetheless makes much of the author’s own…

Peter Turchin sees disaster brewing as the West has overproduced a restless, revolutionary, elite Is the study of history a science? Peter Turchin thinks so. The Russian-American “complexity scientist” departs from the traditional view of history as a subject in the humanities and is among the leaders of a faction who believe history adheres to social…

L’histoire doit-elle prendre modèle sur les sciences de la nature, et se fixer pour objectif de prévoir l’avenir avec une certitude mathématique ? Oui, répond le biologiste P. Turchin, mais n’est-ce pas négliger la nature même de cette discipline ? Peut-on faire une science de l’histoire sur le modèle de la physique ou de la biologie ?…

“Happy countries don’t elect Donald Trump president. Desperate ones do.” From the French Revolution to Tucker Carlson, Peter Turchin leaves no stone unturned, and frightens us with what he finds underneath. • If like me you struggle to understand how Donald Trump ever happened, this is the book for you. • Forget the history of great men and women, the…

The historian Peter Turchin’s new work on how societies collapse due to intra-elite competition raises perilous questions about today’s problems. If a science of history was possible, could policymakers use it? More specifically, could foreign policy establishments around the world guide the chaotic nature of inter-state anarchy and avoid calamity?

Does a cyclic view of American history predict a coming political crisis—and how to navigate it? If historians could tell the future, they would be better paid. They have enough trouble telling the past. History keeps being rewritten because it is impossible not to write from the present.…

Im Buch «End Times» zeigt der Biologe, dass die Überproduktion von Eliten zu gewaltigen Problemen führt. Donald Trump sieht er als «unwahrscheinlichen Präsidenten», der nur möglich war, weil in Amerika die Elite wächst und die Massen verarmen.

In “The Fourth Turning Is Here” and “End Times,” the historian Neil Howe and the social scientist Peter Turchin use generational analysis and Big Data to predict the crises to come. Over the past decade, many Americans have developed a deep foreboding that their society has fallen into crisis. Against this background we have the publications of Neil…

End Times is crammed with striking facts and characters, such as the original useful idiot Savva Morozov, one of the richest men in pre-revolutionary Russia, who funded Bolsheviks, or the fact that Ukraine had per capita GPD in 2014 of just $7,400—around a third of Russia's and half of Belarus's.…

In his recent book End Times, Peter Turchin tries to lay out his story about social, political, and economic change for a popular audience. The book is given added immediacy by its publisher’s subtitle: “Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration”.…

Peter Turchin's data-driven analysis of our historical peril is compelling — and it's also a call to action. The day Donald Trump was arraigned for unauthorized possession of national security documents — heightening his party's attacks on the nation's justice system — also saw the publication of Peter Turchin's new book, "End Times: Elites,…

An influential historian argues that a bulge in the number of frustrated graduates will lead to serious political instability.

On 27 March 2009, President Barack Obama met a group of bank CEOs. Known for his cool head, on this occasion he lost his patience, though not because he was an enemy of the sector – the previous year, when he was still a senator, he had voted for a $700 billion bank bailout.…

For as long as complex human societies have existed there have been people predicting their imminent collapse. In recent years, the apocalypse business has become far more scientific; animal entrails and planetary portents have given way to big data. Peter Turchin is a pre-eminent digital-age seer or, as he suggests, a collapsologist.…

For almost two decades, Peter Turchin has been involved, with many colleagues and co-authors, in an epochal project: to figure out, using quantifiable evidence, what are the forces that lead to the rise, and more importantly, to the decline of nations, political turbulence and decay, and revolutions.…

Peter Turchin continues his scientific exploration of history and the rise and fall of civilizations in his new book: Ultrasociety. I have previously reviewed his 2006 book War and Peace and War and his significant paper published in Nature in 2010 Political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade which warned of the kind of problems we see…