War and Peace and War?

A fascinating article in the Guardian’s Life section today – let down, unfortunately, by an over-emphasis on current events at the end – about the renowned Trantorian mathematician Hari Seldon’s predictive science of Psychohistory ecologist Peter Turchin’s, of the University of Conneticut, mathematical model of history – detailed in his book Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall, updated as War & Peace & War out this September. The article includes a great quote from the profoundly anti-deterministic historian Niall Ferguson

“We do not really study [historical] causes, but what people at the time thought were the causes. And our aim in retrieving their thoughts is not so much to explain how things happened as to understand how they seemed to have happened.”

Categories Uncategorised Tags

We are reader supported. Donate to keep Slugger lit!

For over 20 years, Slugger has been an independent place for debate and new ideas. We have published over 40,000 posts and over one and a half million comments on the site. Each month we have over 70,000 readers. All this we have accomplished with only volunteers we have never had any paid staff.

Slugger does not receive any funding, and we respect our readers, so we will never run intrusive ads or sponsored posts. Instead, we are reader-supported. Help us keep Slugger independent by becoming a friend of Slugger. While we run a tight ship and no one gets paid to write, we need money to help us cover our costs.

If you like what we do, we are asking you to consider giving a monthly donation of any amount, or you can give a one-off donation. Any amount is appreciated.