Statistical methods may reveal cycles of history

Wired : Cliodynamics is named for the Greek muse of history . Founded in the 1990s by Peter Turchin of the University of Connecticut, it is an attempt to mathematically explain cycles of history. With access to ever increasing amounts of historical data becoming available from all around the world and dating back thousands of years, Turchin and others are creating models to fit those data sets. Then they compare them with other data sets from other times and other cultures to see how well they fit. Turchin and his colleagues believe they have found a 100-year cycle of waves of instability that they call the Secular Cycle. They attribute the Secular Cycle to long-term demographic trends, such as populations exceeding production capacity, or a growing elite class competing for limited political and economic power. And in some countries, including the US, they see a secondary 50-year cycle of political violence that is associated with periods of growing social inequality. They explain these cycles as feedback loops like predatorâprey cycles , not as rigidly defined rules of history. The cliodynamic approach to analyzing historical data has competition, but the general practice of applying statistical techniques to history is gaining acceptance by the wider historian community.