Thread by @BretDevereaux

Oh boy, we're doing Peter Turchin 'Cliodynamics' (which I almost typed 'Cliomancy' which seems about as accurate) discourse again.

So my views on the matter were expressed here, from the last time we did Cliodynamics-Discourse:

https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1327041776109154307

Do note that Turchin appears himself in that thread and somewhat moderates the 'tone' of how the press frequently presents him (but then one wonders why that tone appears unaltered in the recent Guardian story theguardian.com/us-news/2021/j…)

Also note Dr. Fafinski @Calthalas response to the current Turchin/Cliodynamics discourse here:

https://twitter.com/Calthalas/status/1351136900757794817

(also a thread).

Fafinski points to some of the real weaknesses in the ancient history parallels that are drawn in the Guardian's treatment of Turchin. I have to admit, I find the equation of the populares with today's populists weak as well.

Also note Dr. Lecaque @tlecaque on the use and abuse of evidence in cliodynamics in this thread:

https://twitter.com/tlecaque/status/1351179051579432965

Lecaque is really blunt here (as is his style) but as a historian, I had roughly the same reaction to Turchin's treatment of the evidence and the way that it flattens and essentializes complex things.

To put my own views out here, I think the problem ehre is essentially a Hayekian knowledge problem. The idea behind cliodynamics is that human societies "change in a somewhat predictable way" because "societies are systems."

But just as economics, as it has matured, has had to accept that the systems it studies are too complex (in part because they are systems where individuals can view the system and understand the system as a system) to predict perfectly, the same goes for societies.

Part of the reason history may rhyme but not repeat is that humans make future decisions with past historical knowledge. Thus, to go even further back, to Heraclitus, "you could not ever step into the same river twice" when it comes to decisions and processes.

Turchin's very confident predictions lack this sense of uncertainty, instead presenting a front of unjustified confidence, based in turn on evidence which often doesn't exist.

It isn't "a more mature social science" but rather (borrowing C.S. Lewis' phrase) "a boy's philosophy."

Cliodynamics reminds me most of the deterministic progression of 'historical modes of production' in early Marxist historiography (mercifully all but abandoned even by far-left historians); another "boy's philosophy" pretending to offer the 'solutions' to historical study.