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Introduction
I
strongly advise you to read this material in sequence, page-by-page,
because I will introduce some concepts gradually. First simple
definitions, then in World History Rewritten section, more exact
explanations, substantations and examples. History Mechanics is
extremly comprehensive, so I will start from easiest problems and then
gradually go to more complicated. Moreover I sometimes have to present
only half-true intermediary explanations (“lies for children” using
terminology of Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) at first, and correct them
later to make this lecture more user-friendly. Read and enjoy.
History processes are
driven mostly by economic factors
To be more precise: economy is not the only power that drives history,
but economic factors are the most important in macroscale, and in long
run. Good analogy could be the gravity in physics. Gravity does not
explain every physical process but is the easiest factor to eliminate,
observe, and examine. That doesn't mean that people behaviors are
driven ONLY by economy. Often people acts according to ideologies they
believe or motivated by some other reasons. Rationality of social
behaviors is a statistical rationality like in biological evolution. Moreover, actions of people, parties,
countries and other players ALWAYS depends on available resources, and
economics concrentrate on the problem of limited resources.
Exceptions
Of course, there are "critical points" (or history turning
points) when two or more opposite processes acts against each other.
These
times other, weaker factors like ideologies, institutions, personal
decisions of a single man (or even a casual nexus of coincidences)
could prevail. The set of laws presented here helps to locate that
critical
points, and lets us ignore events that are not important.
Institutions,
and
ideologies evolve according to economic factors
It is easy to predict emergency of a new ideology or
institution (and its "shape" or "economic core") if we understand an
economic process running in the background..
And vice versa, knowing the economic background of particular
ideology we can say what economic processes are working behind the
scenes simply by observing ideologies, and changes in ideologies.
Of course, we must remember about the historical background of
a country where the ideology evolves. When there is a time (economic
need) for an ideology that promotes an religious dictatorship in
Islamic country, its obvious that we should expect Muslim religious
dictatorship, and not for example Buddhism religious dictatorship.
When a few ideologies compete with each other, the winner will
be the ideology that is the cheapest to promote (and is convergent with
community economic needs).
History laws are
universal, and works in every country, every culture, and every human
community
All "cardinal" differences between cultures are more an
effect
of poor knowledge about history of Non-European countries (forgetting
about Muhammad al-Khwarizmi), and a very poor knowledge about European
history (forgetting about Savonarola). Some times that "differences"
are simply an effect of interpreting temporary historical process as an
immanent element of Non-European culture.
Laws presented here will be true everywhere the second law of thermodynamics
is true.
All laws presented here should work everywhere, where the
second law of the thermodynamics (simply speaking: entropy always
grows) works. There are many low-level laws that rules systems (saying
"system" I mean every complicated being: living beings, species,
institutions, technology, computer programs, etc.) evolution
in competitive environment. I will not present all of them here. Except
a
few most important:
- The more complicated system is, the faster it evolves, and
faster reaches a next levels of complication.
- More complicated systems that evolved in competitive
environment, are (usually) more effective.
- Systems evolve faster, when competition is stronger (but
not too strong).
- The more numerous is the population, the more predictable
is its behavior.
- The more complicated is the system, the more rationale
(predictable) it acts, and works.
Stylistic
corrections, December 2005
Slawomir Dzieniszewski
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