Cliodynamics: History as Science

The page presents cliodynamics as a transdisciplinary field that treats history as a science. It says the goal is to turn verbal theories into mathematical models, derive precise predictions, and test them against empirical material in order to discover general principles of historical change.

Reading notes

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• Empires rise and fall, populations and economies boom and bust, and world religions spread or wither, so the page asks what mechanisms drive these historical processes.
• It says there are many explanations for the fall of the Roman Empire, but no consensus on which are plausible or on the broader mechanisms behind imperial collapse.
• It defines cliodynamics as a field at the intersection of historical macrosociology, economic history, mathematical modeling of long-term social processes, and historical databases.
• It presents mathematical modeling and statistical analysis as key tools in the cliodynamic research program.
• It says the broader aim is to find general principles that explain the functioning and dynamics of real historical societies.
• It notes that the research community has been growing and now has its own journal, Cliodynamics: the Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History.
• One research focus is the collapse of historical empires, which the page links to waves of political instability in agrarian societies.
• It mentions a theory of secular cycles, empirically tested on England, France, Russia, and the Roman Republic and Empire.
• It also asks whether the modern American Republic may face another period of political instability and social disintegration.
• Another focus is why large-scale states and empires were possible at all, given that they are rare in the historical record.
• It uses multilevel selection theory, agent-based models, and empirical surveys of imperial formation to study the forces that held huge empires together.
• It connects the study of large-scale cooperation to failed states and nation building.