Leonid E. Grinin

Andrey V. Korotayev

The application of the evolutionary approach to the history of nature and society has remained one of the most effective ways to conceptualize and integrate our growing knowledge of the Universe, life, society and human thought. The present volume demonstrates this in a rather convincing way. This is the third issue of the Almanac series titled ‘Evolution’. The first volume came out with the sub-heading ‘Cosmic, Biological, and Social’, the second was entitled ‘Evolution: A Big History Perspective’. The present volume is subtitled Development within Big History, Evolutionary and World-System Paradigms. In addition to the straightforward evolutionary approach, it also reflects such adjacent approaches as Big History, the world-system analysis, as well as globalization paradigm and long wave theory. The volume includes a number of the exciting works in these fields. The Almanac consists of five sections. The first section (Globalization as an Evolutionary Process: Yesterday and Today) contains articles demonstrating that the Evolutionary studies is capable of creating a common platform for the world-system approach, globalization studies, and the economic long-wave theory.The articles of the second section (Society, Energy, and Future) discuss the role of energy in the universal evolution, human history and the future of humankind. The third section (Aspects of Social Development) touches upon four aspects of social evolution – technological, environmental, cultural, and political. The fourth section (The Driving Forces and Patterns of Evolution) deals with various phases of megaevolution. There is also a final sectionwhichis devoted to discussions of contemporary evolutionism. This Almanac will be useful both for those who study interdisciplinary macroproblems and for specialists working in focused directions, as well as for those who are interested in evolutionary issues of Cosmology, Biology, History, Anthropology, Economics and other areas of study. More than that, this edition will challenge and excite your vision of your own life and the new discoveries going on around us!

Evolution: Development within Big History, Evolutionary and World-System Paradigms

The present volume is the sixth issue of the ‘Evolution’ Yearbook series. Our Yearbooks are designed to present to its readers the widest possible spectrum of subjects and issues: from universal evolutionism to the analysis of particular evolutionary regularities in the development of biological, abiotic, and social systems, culture, cognition, language, etc. The main objective of our Yearbook is the creation of a unified interdisciplinary field of research, within which scientists specializing in different disciplines could work within the framework of unified or similar paradigms, using common terminology and searching for common rules, tendencies and regularities. Global evolution (in connection with the Big History) becomes the main subject of our Yearbook. We strive to arrange each issue in such a way that the line from cosmic evolution to the human future is evident. Similar to the previous issues, this Yearbook shows some aspects of the evolutionary advance from the earlier phases to the anticipated future of human society. But on the whole, this volume is devoted to different aspects and facts of megaevolution and some universal theories in an attempt to find common ground in the diversity of manifestation of evolution and its forms at different stages of development. The title of this issue ‘Evolutionary Trends, Aspects, and Patterns’ is fully justified. The volume consists of four sections: Big History's Phases and Long-Term Trends; Cosmic Evolution; The Aspects of Socio-Cultural and Political Evolution; and Looking from the Past into the Future. As before, we strive to arrange every issue in such a way that the line from cosmic evolution to the human future is evident. Megahistory and global evolution still are the main subjects of our Yearbook. This Yearbook will be useful both for those who study interdisciplinary macroproblems and for specialists working in focused directions, as well as for those who are interested in evolutionary issues of Cosmology, Biology, History, Anthropology, Economics and other areas of study. More than that, this edition will challenge and excite your vision of your own life and the new discoveries going on around us.

Evolutionary Trends, Aspects, and Patterns

EVOLUTION

William R. Thompson

Stephen I. Ternyik

Tessaleno C. Devezas

Brian J. L. Berry

Euel Elliott

Leo Nefiodow

Valentina M. Bondarenko

Zenonas Norkus

Sergey Yu. Malkov

Arno Tausсh

Marco Gallegati

Elżbieta Mączyńska

Anthony Harper

Though the researchers of the theory of long and medium-term cycles are certainly worried about the economic situation, they understand that the cyclicity still remains an inevitable attribute of economic development. And Juglar's aphorism that crisis is a consequence of the preceded prosperity is still true. In this third issue of the Yearbook ‘Kondratieff Waves’ with the subtitle ‘Cycles, Crises, and Forecasts’, we present a number of insight contributions on nature, egularities, and interconnections among cycles of different duration. Some economic cycles may result in a severe economic crisis. The current one shows once again the importance of the study of cyclical dynamics and its peculiarities. Between the 1980s and 1990s the Keynesian receipts were replaced by neoliberal and monetarist ones which seemed to be miraculous as well. The depleted growth was marked with the largest global crisis of 2008 which also showed that within globalization when regulation in the international arena is impossible yet, there recur the signs of Juglar cycles of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries with their uncontrollable upwards and sharp declines evolving into collapses and panic. This is supported by the fact that for eight years the world has been at the depressive phase. This edition will be useful for economists, social scientists, as well as for a wide range of those interested in the problems of the past, present, and future of global economy and globalization. This research has been supported by the Russian Foundation for the Humanities (Project No 16-02-14053 г).

Cycles, Crises, and Forecasts

KONDRATIEFF WAVES

This fifth issue of the Yearbook ‘Kondratieff Waves’ has the subtitle ‘Historical and Theoretical Aspects’, as its papers cover some interesting aspects of long-wave dynamics both in historical trends and in theoretical researches. The Yearbook consists of three sections. The first section (Theoretical Aspects) includes two articles devoted to the correlation between the long waves and much longer cycles, i.e. the Industrial and the Cybernetic revolutions. The second section (Historical Aspects) presents three contributions which consider the history of the USA, technological activity since the Middle Ages and some little-known aspects of the history of long-wave dynamics research. The final section (Reviews, Notes, and Reflections) includes two reviews. This issue will be useful for economists, social scientists, as well as for a wide range of those interested in the problems of the past, present, and future of global economy and globalization.

Historical and Theoretical Aspects

Kondratieff waves

Peter Herrmann

Ilya V. Ilyin

The scope of human thought along with its ability to proceed from reconstruction of the most ancient periods to anticipation of the distant future, from small objects to galaxies and the Universe as well as, to embrace different trends and dimensions of reality never ceases to amaze us. You are reading a new issue of the Yearbook which contains some ‘grains’ of the description of the billion years' path. This Yearbook presents the global studies which cover different fields of research. The present volume is the sixth in the series of yearbooks with the title Globalistics and Globalization Studies. The subtitle of the volume is ‘Global Evolution, Historical Globalistics and Globalization Studies’ which reflects the contents. The present issue brings together a variety of contributions devoted to mega- and global evolution (Part I); historical globalistics (Part II); globalization and glocalization (Parts III–IV). Besides, Part IV comprises some issues on the view in the future. We become more and more accustomed to think globally and to see global processes. The yearbook will be interesting to a wide range of researchers, teachers, students and all those who are concerned about global issues.

Global Evolution, Historical Globalistics and Globalization Studies

Globalistics and globalization studies

David Christian

David Baker

Michael Charles Tobias

Jane Gray Morrison

Olga A. Sorokina

Rendt Gorter

Anton L. Grinin

Alexander D. Panov

Craig G. Benjamin

Alexander V. Markov

David J. LePoire

Ilya V. Ponomariov

Valentina M. Bonda-renko

Vasily N. Vasilenko

The present volume is the fourth issue of the Yearbook series entitled ‘Evolution’. The title of the present volume is ‘From Big Bang to Nanorobots’. In this way we demonstrate that all phases of evolution and Big History are covered in the articles of the present Yearbook. Several articles also present the forecasts about future development. The main objective of our Yearbook as well as of the previous issues is the creation of a unified interdisciplinary field of research in which the scientists specializing in different disciplines could work within the framework of unified or similar paradigms, using the common terminology and searching for common rules, tendencies and regularities. At the same time for the formation of such an integrated field one should use all available opportunities: theories, laws and methods. In the present volume, a number of such approaches are used. The volume consists of four sections: Universal Evolutionary Principles; Biosocial Evolution, Ecological Aspects, and Consciousness; Projects for the Future; In Memoriam. This Yearbook will be useful both for those who study interdisciplinary macroproblems and for specialists working in focused directions, as well as for those who are interested in evolutionary issues of Cosmology, Biology, History, Anthropology, Economics and other areas of study. More than that, this edition will challenge and excite your vision of your own life and the new discoveries going on around us!

From Big Bang to Nanorobots

Evolution

This book introduces a 'Big History' perspective to understand the acceleration of social, technological and economic trends towards a near-term singularity, marking a radical turning point in the evolution of our planet. It traces the emergence of accelerating innovation rates through global history and highlights major historical transformations throughout the evolution of life, humans, and civilization. The authors pursue an interdisciplinary approach, also drawing on concepts from physics and evolutionary biology, to offer potential models of the underlying mechanisms driving this acceleration, along with potential clues on how it might progress. The contributions gathered here are divided into five parts, the first of which studies historical mega-trends in relation to a variety of aspects including technology, population, energy, and information. The second part is dedicated to a variety of models that can help understand the potential mechanisms, and support extrapolation. In turn, the third part explores various potential future scenarios, along with the paths and decisions that are required. The fourth part presents philosophical perspectives on the potential deeper meaning and implications of the trend towards singularity, while the fifth and last part discusses the implications of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Given its scope, the book will appeal to scholars from various disciplines interested in historical trends, technological change and evolutionary processes.

A Big History Perspective

The 21st Century Singularity and Global Futures

Our Yearbook ‘History and Mathematics’ has already celebrated its 10th anniversary and has confidently entered its second decade. The common feature of all our Yearbooks, including the present volume, is the usage of formal methods and social studies methods intheir synthesis to analyze different historical phenomena. The present Yearbook (which is the seventh in the series) is subtitled ‘Big History Aspects’. This issue is devoted to the problems of evolutionary development of the world. In no way will it be a digression from the direction which we have initially defined for ourYearbook, but just an extension of the scope of the research. The matter is that there are two kinds of history: the history of nature (or more exactly the Universe and the Earth) and the history of humans and mankind. It is not surprising that the idea of historicism penetrated almost every scientific field. At the same time the search for common foundations of this endless in its diversity world has intensified. One of the directions of this interdisciplinary search for the unity of the world in its diversity is Universal Evolutionism (Big History). Mathematical and formal methods help to understand much deeply both natural and human history. This issue of the Yearbook consists of four main sections: (I) Patterns of Big History; (II) Hypotheses of Deep Big History; (III) Biological Aspects; (IV) History and Future of Social Systems. We hope that this issue will be interesting and useful both for historians and mathematicians, as well as for all those dealing with various social and natural sciences.

Big History Aspects

History & Mathematics

Arno Tausch

Willi Semmler

Philippe Jourdon 

Lucas Bernard

Aleksandr V. Gevorkyan

Tom Palley

Denis J. Dean

Jonas Van Vossole

 Simone Nefiodow

Anton L. Grinin 

Nikolai D. Kondratieff

Barry K. Gills

 Robert A. Denemark

In the period from the 1920s to 1930s the theory of economic cycles underwent dramatic changes. Due to the research of such famous economists as Nikolay Kondratieff, Joseph Kitchin, Wesley Mitchell, Simon Kuznets, and Joseph Schumpeter the idea of a whole system of economic cycles (with characteristic periods between two and sixty years) was developed. The idea of a system of intertwined economic cycles is nowadays paramount to the school of evolutionary economics and its development promises rather interesting future outcomes. That is why this issue of our ‘Kondratieff Waves’ Yearbook is devoted to the interconnections between various economic cycles. As to the subtitle of this volume, one should note that many of the contributors refer to the system of cycles and the fact that real economic cycles make up a system, whereas among different types of cycles, the Juglar, Kuznets, and Kondratieff cycles are the most important ones for the present-day economic dynamics. Although Kondratieff himself considered long waves as above all an economic phenomenon, the theory of the long waves became, however, very actively developed in connection with their political and geopolitical aspects. In this Yearbook, the political aspect of Kondratieff waves is the subject of several articles in the second section. The last section of this Yearbook is devoted to the heritage of Kondratieff and other prominent economists. The year 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the outstanding Russian economist, one of the most prominent researchers of medium-term economic cycles, Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, and the volume is concluded with Kondratieff's article about him. Concerning 2015, we should mention another anniversary, namely, 30 years since the death of Simon Kuznets (1901–1985). This edition will be useful for economists, social scientists, as well as for a wide range of those interested in the problems of the past, present, and future of global economy and globalization.

Juglar – Kuznets – Kondratieff

Kondrarieff waves

The present volume is the fifth in the series of yearbooks with the title Globalistics and Globalization Studies. The subtitle of the present volume is Global Transformations and Global Future. We become more and more accustomed to think globally and to see global processes. And our future can all means be global. However, is this statement justified? Indeed, in recent years, many have begun to claim that globalization has stalled, that we are rather dealing with the process of anti-globalization. Will not we find ourselves at some point again in an edifice spanning across the globe, but divided into national apartments, separated by walls of high tariffs and mutual suspicion? Of course, some setbacks are always possible, because the process of globalization cannot develop smoothly. It is a process which is itself emerging from contradictions and is shaped by a new contradiction. They often go much further than underlying systemic changes allow. They break forward, as the vanguard of a victorious army, and then often meet resistance of various social and political forces and may suddenly start to roll back just at the moment when everyone expects their further offensive. We believe that this is what is happening with globalization at present. The yearbook will be interesting to a wide range of researchers, teachers, students and all those who are concerned about global issues.

Global Transformations and Global Future.

Antony Harper

Yuri E. Berezkin

Svetlana A. Borinskaya

Albert I. Davletshin

Daria A. Khaltourina

The present Yearbook (which is the sixth in the series) is subtitled Economy, Demography, Culture, and Cosmic Civilizations. To some extent it reveals the extraordinary potential of scientific research. The common feature of all our Yearbooks, including the present volume, is the usage of formal methods and social studies methods in their synthesis to analyze different phenomena. In other words, if to borrow Alexander Pushkin's words, ‘to verify the algebra with harmony’. One should note that publishing in a single collection the articles that apply mathematical methods to the study of various epochs and scales – from deep historical reconstruction to the pressing problems of the modern world – reflects our approach to the selection of contributions for the Yearbook. History and Mathematics, Social Studies and formal methods, as previously noted, can bring nontrivial results in the studies of different spheres and epochs. This issue consists of three main sections: (I) Historical and Technological Dimensions includes two papers (the first is about the connection between genes, myths and waves of the peopling of Americas; the second one is devoted to quantitative analysis of innovative activity and competition in technological sphere in the Middle Ages and Modern Period); (II) Economic and Cultural Dimensions (the contributions are mostly focused on modern period); (III) Modeling and Theories includes two papers with interesting models (the first one concerns modeling punctuated equilibria apparent in the macropattern of urbanization over time; in the second one the author attempts to estimate the number of Communicative Civilizations). We hope that this issue will be interesting and useful both for historians and mathematicians, as well as for all those dealing with various social and natural sciences.

Economy, Demography, Culture, and Cosmic Civilizations

History & Mathematics:

Peter J. Richerson

Craig Benjamin

Ken Baskin

Ken Gilbert

Antonio Gelis-Filho

David Hookes

Joe Brewer

The present volume is the fifth issue of the ‘Evolution’ Yearbook series. Our Yearbooks are designed to present to its readers the widest possible spectrum of subjects and issues: from universal evolutionism to the analysis of particular evolutionary regularities in the development of biological, abiotic, and social systems, culture, cognition, language, etc. The main objective of our Yearbook is the creation of a unified interdisciplinary field of research, within which scientists specializing in different disciplines could work within the framework of unified or similar paradigms, using common terminology and searching for common rules, tendencies and regularities. Global evolution (in connection with the Big History) becomes the main subject of our Yearbook. We strive to arrange each issue in such a way that the line from cosmic evolution to the human future is evident. What is the subject of the present issue of the Yearbook? Similar to the previous issues, it shows some aspects of the evolutionary advance from the earlier phases to the anticipated future of human society. But on the whole, this volume is devoted to different aspects and facts of megaevolution and some universal theories in an attempt to find common ground in the diversity of manifestation of evolution and its forms at different stages of development. So the title of this issue, ‘Evolution and Big History: Dimensions, Trends, and Forecasts’, is fully justified (besides, several papers contribute to the field of Big History). The volume consists of four sections: Dimensions, Trends, and Aspects; Big History's Manifestations; Trends and Forecasts; and Reviews and Information. This Yearbook will be useful both for those who study interdisciplinary macroproblems and for specialists working in focused directions, as well as for those who are interested in evolutionary issues of Cosmology, Biology, History, Anthropology, Economics and other areas of study. More than that, this edition will challenge and excite your vision of your own life and the new discoveries going on around us.

Evolution and Big History: Dimensions, Trends, and Forecasts

Boris N. Kuzyk

Askar A. Akaev

Brian J. L. Berry 

Valentina M. Bondarenko 

Tessaleno C. Devezas 

Claude Diebolt 

Sergey Yu. Glazyev 

Ruslan S. Grinberg

Bert de Groot 

Masaaki Hirooka 

Witold Kwasnicki 

Francisco Louçã 

Vladimir I. Mayevsky

Leo Nefiodow 

Carlota Perez

Sanjay Prasad 

Arno Tausch 

William R. Thompson 

Andrew B. Tylecote 

Yuri V. Yakovets 

This fourth issue of the Yearbook ‘Kondratieff Waves’ has the subtitle ‘The Spectrum of Opinions’, as its papers cover a whole range of problems. The Yearbook consists of three sections. The Introduction of this issue is dedicated to Nikolai Kondratieff's ideas which still are important to an analysis of the world economic situation. The first section (Long Waves in the Context of World Economy and Politics) includes five contributions devoted to the study of different spheres from economy to jihadism. The speeches of Kondratieff medal laureates are published in the second section (Kondratieff Medal: Winners' Speeches). It presents a very impressive collection of different views of well-known and young researchers. The last section (Reviews and Notes) includes Antony Harper's re view of Leonid Grinin, Andrey Korotayev and Arno Tausch's monograph ‘Economic Cycles, Crises, and the Global Periphery’ published by Springer International Publishing. This issue will be useful for economists, social scientists, as well as for a wide range of those interested in the problems of the past, present, and future of global economy and globalization.

The Spectrum of Opinions

Andrey V. Korotayev

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