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Comte’s positivistic tradition was developed by the English sociologist and philosopher H. Spencer (1820-1903) who connected sociology with the idea of evolution. The basis of his conception was the analogy of state with biological organism.

Similarly to a biostructure, a state has its own life circle: birth, growth, ageing, and downfall. This idea was developed by O. Spengler²⁰ who considered the historical fate of the European civilization and by L. N. Gumi-lev who analyzed ethnogenesis²¹.

On the boundary of the XIX-XX centuries, a positivistic interpretation of social mechanisms was presented by E. Durkheim (1858-1917). The main idea of his conception reduces to a search for social harmony under objective conditions of division of social labour. As distinct from Marx who accented attention on the estrangement of a worker from results of his/her work under conditions when division of labour is based on private interests, Durkheim considered this problem from the viewpoint of relations between the individual and group. Since collectivistic societies are historically primary, the individual arises from the society but not the society from individuals. Social mechanisms are regulated by a search for the harmony of agreement. Moreover, organic solidarity is caused by labour division²². From the methodological viewpoint, it is worth to note the approach of Durkheim to the definition of social roles.

The absolutization of rationalization and the linear progressive theory are opposed by the conception of W. Pareto (1848-1923). Whereas O. Comte considered the evolution of the man, on the whole, as the motion from fetishism to positivism through the theological and metaphysical stages regardless of certain delays, these four images of thinking, according to Pareto, normally interact at various levels in all the time. For the whole mankind, there is no obligatory transition from one type of thinking to another in the form of a single and irreversible process, but there are transient oscillations, defined by societies and classes, relative to the influence of each of these means of thinking²³. It follows that definite tasks related to the development of the society are solved at specific historical stages through a change of governing elites. New elites are formed from lower strata, flourish, and then decline²⁴. The idea of cyclicity becomes pivotal for the social theory.

The rationalistic conception of M. Weber (1864-1920) approaches the history and sociology not as two different disciplines but as a whole methodological system. In his study, the historian aspires to define a causal significance of various elements having created a unique conjuncture, but the sociologist tries to establish interconnections (in their temporal sequence) which were observed many times or can repeat²⁵. On the boundary of the XXI century, the discourse of social-historical reflection remains open.

CHAPTER 3

Idea of cycles
in the context of periodization
of social development

The object of conceptual analysis is the life cycle of the society as a subject of the historical process. This allows one to create an universal applied model of epochal historical cycle as the means of analysis and prognosis at the level of the history of the whole world, separate continents, and countries.

The idea of cyclicity is characteristic of the sociologic theory of Pitirim Sorokin who investigated social phenomena common for all social-cultural phenomena repeating in time and space²⁶. Sorokin suggested the following division of the rhythms of cultural changes of the European history into periods:

Sorokin distinguished the full cycle and the relative cycle. In the first case, the end phase turns into the initial phase and then the cycle begins again. But, in the relative cycle, the direction of repeating process does not fully coincide with the direction of a series of similar anterior processes²⁷. This concept helps to explain the existence of interrupted cycles in the history of development of various nations and civilizations.

The dominant theme in the contemporary sociologic theory is the movement to the theoretical synthesis²⁸. The exploitation of efficient methods of various conceptual origins will help to explain the key events and turning points of history. In this context, the attention is attracted by the latest concepts of cyclicity of the social development, worked out in various spheres of social sciences²⁹. In particular, it concerns the development of the methodology of a research of long cycles. For instance, G. Taylor suggested the theory of a periodic change of the global historical process every 500 years. Moreover, the phases of a political cycle, that are under the influence of 60-year economic cycles (Kondratiev waves), change every 120 years. On the basis of analysis of these cycles, countries-hegemons for various historical periods are defined³⁰.

Society as a complex living system, whose structural elements are permanently changing, is involved into life cycles of various hierarchies: from cosmic cycles to the life cycles of generations and separate individuals.

A. L. Chizhevsky (1897-1964) introduced the socium into cosmos, having connected the human history with the history of the Universe. By that, the correlation between the world historical process and cyclic solar activity was revealed. It is not the Sun that forces people to do something – those are social conditions that urge them to it. The Sun initiates the chain reaction of actions, whose specific sense has ripened by that moment. The Sun leads the social system, strained in a complicated way, out of the state of relative balance and serves like an exterior signal for switching it into another condition³¹. The concept of Chizhevsky gives objective grounds for using the methodology of natural sciences for the research of social development. The influence of the Sun’s activity upon the process of ethnogenesis is represented in the most adequate way in Gumiliev’s conception³². The development of an ethnos is shown for three existentialistic phases of the life cycle: the origin, growth, and death. The biosocial mechanism, connected with the genesis of these processes, is focused on the idea of passionarity, namely on the phenomenon of energetic pulse received by an ethnos in a definite spatio-temporal field.

The variety of the existing ethnoses is provided by the geographical differentiation.

The historical complement of Gumilev’s conception is the fundamental research by A. J. Toynbee (1889-1975). His theory of historical development is described in his 12-volume «Research of History» ³³. The concept of cycles is represented by the analysis of the origin, growth, and death of civilization. To define the main characteristics of the rhythm of existence of civilizations, A. Toynbee introduced the term «call-reply» explaining changes in the main stages of a life cycle of civilizations: origin, growth, fracture, and decay. The search for an efficient reply to calls of the environment is characteristic of the «father civilizations», and to calls of the natural and social nature – for subsequent civilizations. The history of 36 civilizations is represented. They are classified into three groups:

• flourishing civilizations (28);

• not developed (5);

• frozen civilizations (3)³⁴.

Toynbee researched the problem of historical development at two levels: definite civilizations and definite countries. The most arguable hypothesis of Toynbee’s concept is the possibility of emergence of a universal civilization. On the other hand, his colossal theoretical work has become the well of philosophical, historical, and social ideas.

The presented above opinion concerns also the scientific heritage of Osvald Spengler (1880-1936). His book «Decline of Europe. Essay on Morphology of World History» has become the classics of modernism³⁵. Such is the contraposition of the culture and civilization, which, being the progress of history, presents a gradual development of nonorganic and perished forms. A civilization is the inevitable destination of a culture³⁶. Spengler compared the civilization with an organism experiencing the periods of childhood, youth, maturity and senility.

The idea of comparison of the social development with the ontogenesis of an individual is theoretically prospective. There appears a possibility of involvement of methodological concepts of psychology and societal psychology in the research. This will allow us to show the correlation between the socium and an individual. The main problem of social engineering that has something in common with the ideas of cyclic development is connected with the tasks of prognostication of social-historical processes³⁷.

Karl Popper, giving the name of «poverty of historicism» to the attempts of prophecies concerning the universal history which follows its predestined way, turns his attention to a principal impossibility of scientific forecast with the use of rational methods. First, there is no universal history of the mankind at all (there are only varied histories of different parts of the society). The second reason is that there exists a random, irrational, and unstable personal factor within the history, and, third, the human history is a unique and inimitable process³⁸. However, the theoretical denial of Popper’s prognostic agnosticism is given by social synergetics – the science of regularities of the interaction of a social order and chaos. According to this theory, the essence of development of the social reality reduces neither to the one-sided enlargement of order (O. Comte) nor to the one-sided growth of a degree of freedom (chaos) (H. Spencer). The evolution of a dissipative structure (the synthesis of chaos and order) is the growth of a degree of synthesis of order and chaos, conditioned by the aspiration to a maximum stability³⁹.

Social synergetics has showed the groundlessness of the mixing of terms «aim» and «sense»: the absence of any aim does not mean the absence of any sense (movement to the superattractor or to the limit state. Has reached it, the system can return to none of the former states). It is the mistake that was made by Popper in «Poverty of historicism»: by assuming that the history has no aim, he inferred that it has no sense.

We emphasize that social synergetics, looking at the social-historical development through the prism of «whirligig» of order and chaos, allows one to synthesize the ideas of social engineering and cyclicity of social development, which, from the viewpoint of applied meaning of the suggested conception, is one of the most important tasks of authors’ collective.

The state of scientific development of the problem of social-historical development presents the theoretical grounds necessary for the conceptual construction of a new model of historical development in the historical context.

CHAPTER 4

Choice of methodological foundations
for the study

Methodological bases of the new paradigm have to ensure the analysis of social-historical development at the level of specific countries, regions, and civilizations, to adequately interpret important events of the contemporary epoch, and to allow one to foresee principal tendencies and perspective of the historical development.

In the modern sociological science, there occurs an actual global transformation stimulating a change of basic categorial characteristics, which implies a change in representations of the common and the single.

Objectively, the time of a change of the paradigm of social-historical development came. By a paradigm, we mean theoretically and practically important scientific achievement which give a model, statements of problems, and their solution to the scientific community for a certain time⁴⁰.

A result of study will depend on the basic choice of a methodological approach. The criterion of objectivity and universality of sociological knowledge requires to study a situation in all regions and countries of the world in view of global tendencies. This allows one to clarify the fact of the termination of one epoch and appearance of the other and possible ways of the transition to it. In this context, the American sociologist I. Wallerstein outlines the aspiration of sociology to become the exact science normative for the sphere of policy⁴¹.

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