Основой первого технологического уклада стали прорывные инновации в текстильной промышленности. В 1730 г. Джоном Кеем был изобретен челночный ткацкий станок. В результате ткачество стало значительно опережать по объемам прядение. Наиболее быстрый процесс механизации прядения (а позже и других операций) начался в 1760–1770-е гг. Это было время изобретения Джеймсом Харгривсом прялки «Дженни» и Ричардом Аркрайтом – аппарата для механической фабрикации пряжи, используемого на его же фабриках. Но за этими успехами стоял труд немалого числа изобретателей предшествующих десятилетий (см.: Цейтлин 1940; Gri- nin, (...) Korotayev 2015), поскольку для начала технологического прорыва необходимо накопление усилий очень многих людей. (shrink)

Возникший глубокий кризис украинской государственности и идущая там, по сути, гражданская война вынуждают обратиться к причинам постоянных неудач формирования украинского государства. Многие на первый взгляд труднообъяснимые и откро-венно негативные особенности внешней и внутренней политики современной Украины в значительной степени связаны с геополитическими и историческими особенностями формирования государства, менталитета и традициями социально-политической психологии. Очевидно также, что многие отрицательно воздействующие на стабильность государства геополитические и геокультурные факторы прошлого не утратили своего значения до сих пор. Анализу этих факторов и их роли в разные (...) периоды украинской истории и посвящена данная статья. В статье также сделана попытка систематического сравнения истории Украины с историей ее ближайших соседей (России, Белоруссии, Польши), что позволяет лучше понять причины различий исторических судеб в сходных условиях и определить степень влияния соседей на политические модели Украины и ее отдельных областей. (shrink)

В настоящей статье на базе теории принципов производства и производственных революций мы показываем взаимосвязь между К-волнами и крупнейшими технологическими переворотами в истории, а также делаем прогнозы об особенностях шестой К-волны в свете идущей с 1950-х годов кибернетической революции. Мы предполагаем, что шестая кондратьевская волна в 2030–2040-х годах сольется с завершающей фазой кибернетической революции (которую мы назвали фазой самоуправляемых систем). Этот период будет характеризоваться прорывом в медицинских технологиях, которые смогут объединить вокруг себя много других технологий и в целом составят комплекс МБНРИК-технологий (...) (медико-био-нано-робото-инфо-когнитивных технологий). В статье даются некоторые прогнозы о разви-тии данных технологий. (shrink)

First published in English in 1953, this important book from eminent philosopher Karl Jaspers deals with the philsophy of the history of mankind. More specifically, its avowed aim is to assist in heightening our awareness of the _present_ by placing it within the framework of the long obscurity of prehistory and the boundless realm of possibilities which lie within the undecided future.This analysis is split into 3 parts: World history The present and the future The meaning of history.

'...a challenging and useful book, both because it provokes a careful scrutiny of one's own basic ideas regarding evolutionary theory, and because it cuts across so many biological disciplines.' -The Quarterly Review of Biology 'In my view, this work exemplifies Theoretical Biology at its best...here is rampant speculation that is consistently based on cautious reasoning from the available data. Even more refreshing is the absence of sloganeering, grandstanding, and 'isms'.' -Biology and Philosophy 'Epigenetics is fundamental to understanding both development and (...) gene expression, and not surprisingly, evolutionary biologists have long been fascinated with its proper place in evolutionary theory...Enter Jablonka and Lamb, who provide a thoughtful review of the recent molecular literature and suggest a number of potential consequences.' -EvolutionSince first publication of this controversial book, much of the initial opposition to the ideas it contained has been replaced by a general, although often grudging, acceptance of them. Advances in knowledge, especially at the molecular level, have enhanced general awareness and interest in epigenetics and the evolution of systems that store and transmit information and put any of the authors' speculations on a more solid basis. This paperback edition contains a new Preface that sets out the major changes in the scientific world and in the authors' own thinking that have occurred since the book was published. A new Appendix provides a selected bibliography of the many books and articles about epigenetic inheritance and its role in evolution that have appeared since first publication. (shrink)

Political disintegration is a persistent feature of world history. The Collapse of Complex Societies, though written by an archaeologist, will therefore strike a chord throughout the social sciences. Any explanation of societal collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all such societies in both the present and future. Dr. Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching (...) theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses. (shrink)

In this paper I wish to illuminate the Hobbesian-Aristotelian controversy from a new angle. I suggest that contrary to what has been assumed from Hobbes's time down to this day, the Greek polis was not a State, or what Hobbes called a Common-wealth, but rather what anthropologists call a stateless community. The latter is characterized by the absence of coercive apparatuses, which means that the ability to apply force is more or less evenly distributed among the armed, or potentially armed, (...) members of the community. In Hobbesian terminology this means that we are dealing with a political community without a �common power� or without a sovereign, or a political community in the �state of nature�, but these are, of course, absurdities. (shrink)

The comparison between biological and social macroevolution is a very important (though insufficiently studied) subject whose analysis renders new significant possibilities to comprehend the processes, trends, mechanisms, and peculiarities of each of the two types of macroevolution. Of course, there are a few rather important (and very understandable) differences between them; however, it appears possible to identify a number of fundamental similarities. One may single out at least three fundamental sets of factors determining those similarities. First of all, those similarities (...) stem from the fact that in both cases we are dealing with very complex non-equilibrium (but rather stable) systems whose principles of functioning and evolution are described by the General Systems' Theory, as well as by a number of cybernetic principles and laws. -/- Secondly, in both cases we do not deal with isolated systems; in both cases we deal with a complex interaction between systems of organic systems and external environment, whereas the reaction of systems to external challenges can be described in terms of certain general principles (that, however, express themselves rather differently within the biological reality, on the one hand, and within the social reality, on the other). -/- Thirdly, it is necessary to mention a direct ‘genetic’ link between the two types of macroevolution and their mutual influence. -/- It is important to emphasize that the very similarity of the principles and regularities of the two types of macroevolution does not imply their identity. Rather significant similarities are frequently accompanied by enormous differences. For example, genomes of the chimpanzees and the humans are very similar – with differences constituting just a few per cent; however, there are enormous differences with respect to intellectual and social differences of the chimpanzees and the humans hidden behind the apparently ‘insignificant’ difference between the two genomes. Thus, in certain respects it appears reasonable to consider the biological and social macroevolution as a single macroevolutionary process. This implies the necessity to comprehend the general laws and regularities that describe this process, though their manifestations may display significant variations depending on properties of a concrete evolving entity (biological, or social one). An important notion that may contribute to the improvement of the operationalization level as regards the comparison between the two types of macroevolution is the one that we suggested some time ago – the social aromorphosis (that was developed as a counterpart to the notion of biological aromorphosis well established within Russian evolutionary biology). We regard social aromorphosis as a rare qualitative macrochange that increases in a very significant way complexity, adaptability, and mutual influence of the social systems, that opens new possibilities for social macrodevelopment. In our paper we discuss a number of regularities that describe biological and social macroevolution and that employ the notions of social and biological aromorphosis such as ones of the module evolution (or the evolutionary ‘block assemblage’), ‘payment for arogenic progress’ etc. (shrink)

This article considers concrete manifestations of the politogenesis multilinearity and the variation of its forms; it analyzes the main causes that determined the politogenetic pathway of a given society. The respective factors include the polity's size, its ecological and social environment. The politogenesis should be never reduced to the only one evolutionary pathway leading to the statehood. The early state formation was only one of many versions of development of complex late archaic social systems. The author designates various complex non-state (...) political systems as early state analogues. The early state analogue posed a real alternative to the state for a rather long period of time, whereas in many ecologically marginal regions they could compete quite seriously with the state sometimes until recently. Thus, it was only in the final count that the state became the leading form of political organization of complex societies. The very pathways to statehood had a few versions. One may group them into two main types: ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’. Within the ‘vertical’ model the state formation took place in a direct way, i.e. directly from small pre-state polities to primitive statehood. Within the ‘horizontal’ model we first ob-serve the formation of early state analogues that were quite com-parable to the state as regards their complexity, whereas later those analogues were transformed into states . (shrink)

In the theory of the early state it was fundamentally new and important from a methodological point of view to define the early state as a separate stage of evolution essentially different from the following stage, the one of the full-grown or mature state. ‘To reach the early state level is one thing, to develop into a full-blown, or mature state is quite another’ (Claessen and Skalník 1978b: 22). At the same time they (as well as a number of other (...) authors) indicated quite soundly that not all early states were able to become and actually became mature ones (see e.g., Claessen and Skalník 1978a; Claessen and van de Velde 1987b; Shifferd 1987). Thus there was formed exactly an evolutionary sequence of statehood in the form of a two-stage scheme: the early state – the mature state. And that explained a lot in the mechanisms and directions of the political evolution. However, the former of these two stages of the evolution of statehood (the early state) has been studied rather thoroughly, whereas the latter (the mature state) has not become the subject of a similarly close examination. Unfortunately, the analysis of the mature state has been little advanced in those several contributions to the subsequent volumes of the Early State project (further referred to as Project) where the subject was touched upon. In the present paper after a brief analysis of the Project participants' views on the mature state I will present my own approach to the distinction of the stages of the evolution of statehood which to my mind develops and supplements Claessen – Skalník's ideas on the subject. However, this has made it necessary to suggest new formulations of the main characteristics of each stage of the evolution of the state. (shrink)

There is no doubt that periodization is a rather effective method of data ordering and analysis, but it deals with exceptionally complex types of processual and temporal phenomena and thus it simplifies historical reality. Many scholars emphasize the great importance of periodization for the study of history. In fact, any periodization suffers from one-sidedness and certain deviations from reality. However, the number and significance of such deviations can be radically diminished as the effectiveness of periodization is directly connected with its (...) author's understanding of the rules and peculiarities of this methodological procedure. In this paper we would like to suggest a model of periodization of history based on our theory of historical process. We shall also demonstrate some possibilities of mathematical modeling for the problems concerning the macroperiodization of the world historical process. This analysis identifies a number of cycles within this process and suggests its generally hyperexponential shape, which makes it possible to propose a number of forecasts concerning the forthcoming decades. (shrink)

There are very significant conceptual links between theories of social macroevolution and theories of the World System development. It is shown that the growth of the World System complexity and integrity can be traced through a system of phase transitions of macroevolution. The first set of phase transition is connected with the agrarian, industrial, and information-scientific revolutions (that are interpreted as changes of “production principles”). The second set consists of phase transitions within one production principle. These phase transitions are analyzed (...) on the basis of the World System urbanization dynamics, but they can be traced with respect to the other (cultural, economic, technological, demographic, political, etc.) dimensions of the World System development. (shrink)

The object of this book is to provide a simple introduction to the Indian systems of philosophy. Each one of these systems has had a vast and varied development. An attempt has been made to introduce the reader to the spirit and outlook of Indian philosophy and help him to grasp thoroughly the central ideas rather than acquaint him with minute details. Modern students of philosophy feel many difficulties in understanding the Indian problems and theories. Their long experience with university (...) students has helped the authors to realise these, and they have tried to remove them as far as possible. This accounts for most of the critical discussions which could otherwise have been dispensed with. The book has been primarily written for beginners. The first chapter which contains the general principles and basic features of Indian philosophy, as well as a brief sketch of each system, gives the student a bird's-eye view of the entire field and prepares him for a more intensive study of the systems which are contained in the following chapters. It is hoped, therefore, that the book will suit the needs of university students at different stages, as well as of general readers interested in Indian Philosophy. (shrink)

The book, with its emphasis on the interaction of microstructures with the entire biosphere, ecosystems etc., and on how micro- and macrocosmos mutually create the conditions for their further evolution, provides a comprehensive framework for a deeper understanding of human creativity in a time of transition.

Familiarity with Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution is essential to every well-educated individual. One of the most important books ever published--and a continuing source of controversy, a century and a half later--this classic of science is reproduced in a facsimile of the critically acclaimed first edition.

The Muqaddimah , often translated as "Introduction" or "Prolegomenon," is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldûn (d. 1406), this monumental work laid down the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics. The first complete English translation, by the eminent Islamicist and interpreter of Arabic literature Franz Rosenthal, was published in three volumes in 1958 as part of the Bollingen Series and received (...) immediate acclaim in America and abroad. A one-volume abridged version of Rosenthal's masterful translation was first published in 1969. This new edition of the abridged version, with the addition of a key section of Rosenthal's own introduction to the three-volume edition, and with a new introduction by Bruce B. Lawrence, will reintroduce this seminal work to twenty-first-century students and scholars of Islam and of medieval and ancient history. (shrink)

"Philosophical anthropology on the grandest scale....Gellner has produced a sharp challenge to his colleagues and a thrilling book for the non-specialist. Deductive history on this scale cannot be proved right or wrong, but this is Gellner writing, incisive, iconoclastic, witty and expert. His scenario compels our attention."—Adam Kuper, _New Statesman_ "A thoughtful and lively meditation upon probably the greatest transformation in human history, upon the difficult problems it poses and the scant resources it has left us to solve them."—Charles Larmore, (...) _New Republic_. (shrink)

There is considerable scope for developing a more explicit role for ethnography within the research program proposed in the article. Ethnographic studies of cultural micro-evolution would complement experimental approaches by providing insights into the “natural” settings in which cultural behaviours occur. Ethnography can also contribute to the study of cultural macro-evolution by shedding light on the conditions that generate and maintain cultural lineages. (Published Online November 9 2006).

Darwinian evolution, defined as evolution arising from selection based directly on the properties of individuals, does not account for cultural constructs providing the organizational basis of human societies. The difficulty with linking Darwinian evolution to structural properties of cultural constructs is exemplified with kinship terminologies, a cultural construct that structures and delineates the domain of kin in human societies. (Published Online November 9 2006).

Evolutionary developmental biology (“evo-devo”) may provide insights and new methods for studies of cognition and cultural evolution. For example, I propose using cultural selection and individual learning to examine constraints on cultural evolution. Modularity, the idea that traits vary independently, can facilitate evolution (increase “evolvability”), because evolution can act on one trait without disrupting another. I explore links between cognitive modularity, evolutionary modularity, and cultural evolvability. (Published Online November 9 2006).

We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with (...) the macroevolutionary methods of systematics, paleobiology, and biogeography, whereas mathematical models derived from population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution. Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in “social cognitive neuroscience,” although many fundamental issues have yet to be resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences. (shrink)

Modern efforts to model cultural transmission have struggled to identify a unit of cultural transmission and particular transmission processes. Anthropologists of the early twentieth century discussed cultural traits as units of transmission equivalent to recipes (rules and ingredients) and identified integration as a signature process and effect of transmission. (Published Online November 9 2006).

Advancing a general Darwinian framework to explain culture is an exciting endeavor. It requires that we face up to the challenge of identifying the specific components that are effective in replication processes in culture. This challenge includes the unsolved problem of explaining cultural inheritance, both at the level of individuals and at the level of social organizations and institutions.

An effective restructuring of the social sciences around the evolutionary model requires that evolutionary theory has explanatory power with respect to the spread of cultural traits: The causal mechanisms involved should be structurally analogous to those of biological evolution. I argue that this is implausible because phenotypical consequences of cultural traits are not causally relevant to their chances of “survival.” (Published Online November 9 2006).

Mesoudi et al. argue that the current inability to identify the means by which cultural traits are acquired does not debilitate their project to draw clear parallels between cultural and biological evolution. However, I suggest that cultural phenomena may be accounted for by biological processes, unless we can identify a cultural “genotype” that carries information from person to person independently of genes. (Published Online November 9 2006).

If culture is defined as variation acquired and maintained by social learning, then culture is common in nature. However, cumulative cultural evolution resulting in behaviors that no individual could invent on their own is limited to humans, song birds, and perhaps chimpanzees. Circumstantial evidence suggests that cumulative cultural evolution requires the capacity for observational learning. Here, we analyze two models the evolution of psychological capacities that allow cumulative cultural evolution. Both models suggest that the conditions which allow the evolution of (...) such capacities when rare are much more stringent than the conditions which allow the maintenance of the capacities when common. This result follows from the fact that the assumed benefit of the capacities, cumulative cultural adaptation, cannot occur when the capacities are rare. These results suggest why such capacities may be rare in nature. (shrink)

Есть исследователи, проблематика работ и теории которых остаются актуальными длительное время и после их смерти. К числу таких, несом- ненно, относится и Николай Дмитриевич Кондратьев – замечательный российский экономист, один из тех, чье имя довольно широко известно и за рубежом. И актуальность его идей тем более важно отметить в ознаме-нование 125-летнего юбилея Н. Д. Кондратьева, который мы отпраздновали в прошлом 2017 году. Именно этой теме – связи творчества Кондратьева и проблем современной экономики и экономической науки – и посвящены многие статьи (...) данного выпуска ежегодника. Биографии и отдельным аспектам творчества ученого отведены статьи первого раздела. Тем не менее нельзя не сказать хотя бы немного об этой личности и во Введении. (shrink)

This article presents possible answers, and their respective probabilities, to the question, ‘What are the consequences of the present global crisis in the proximate future of the World System?’ It also attempts to describe the basic characteristics of the forthcoming ‘Epoch of New Coalitions’ and to forecast certain future conditions. Among the problems analyzed in this paper are the following: What does the weakening of the economic role of the USA as the World System centre mean? Will there be a (...) leader in the future World System? Will the deficit of global governance and world fragmentation continue to worsen? How can national sovereignty be transformed? (shrink)

The article presents a verbal and mathematical model of medium-term business cycles (with a characteristic period of 7–11 years) known as Juglar cycles. The model takes into account a number of approaches to the analysis of such cycles; in the meantime it also takes into account some of the authors' own generalizations and additions that are important for understanding the internal logic of the cycle, its variability and its peculiarities in the present-time conditions. The authors argue that the most important (...) cause of cyclical crises stems from strong structural disproportions that develop during economic booms. These are not only disproportions between different economic sectors, but also disproportions between different societal subsystems; at present these are also disproportions within the World System as a whole. The proposed model of business cycle is based on its subdivision into four phases: – recovery phase (which could be subdivided into the start sub-phase and the acceleration sub-phase); – upswing/prosperity/expansion phase (which could be subdivided into the growth sub-phase and the boom/overheating sub-phase); – recession phase (within which one may single out the crash/bust/acute crisis subphase and the downswing sub-phase); – depression/stagnation phase (which we could subdivide into the stabilization subphase and the breakthrough sub-phase). The article provides a detailed qualitative description of macroeconomic dynamics at all the phases; it specifies driving forces of cyclical dynamics and the causes of transition from one phase to another (including psychological causes); a special attention is paid to the turning point from the peak of overheating to the acute crisis, as well as to the turning point from the downswing to recovery. The proposed mathematical model of Juglar cycle takes into account the following effects that are typical for the market economy: • positive feedbacks between various economic processes; • presence of a certain inertia, time lags in reactions of the economic subsystem to the change in conditions; • amplification by the financial subsystem of positive feedbacks and time lags in the economic subsystem; • excessive reaction to changing conditions during the acute crisis sub-phase. The authors suggest that the current crisis turns out to be rather similar to classical Juglar crises; however, there is also a significant difference, as the current crisis occurs at a truly global scale. Yet, due to this truly global scale of the current crisis, the possibilities of regulation with the national state's measures have turned out to be ineffective,whereas the suprastate regulation of financial processes hardly exists. It is shown that all these have led to the reproduction of the current crisis according to a classical Juglar scenario. (shrink)

Mesoudi et al.'s new synthesis for cultural evolution closely parallels the evolutionary synthesis of Neo-Darwinism. It too draws inspiration from population genetics, recruits other fields, and, unfortunately, also ignores development. Enculturation involves many serially acquired skills and dependencies that allow us to build a rich cumulative culture. The newer synthesis, evolutionary developmental biology, provides a key tool, generative entrenchment, to analyze them. (Published Online November 9 2006).

The study of culture from an evolutionary perspective has been slowed by resistance from some quarters of anthropology, a poor appreciation of the fidelity of cultural transmission, and misunderstandings about human intentionality. (Published Online November 9 2006).

If culture is defined as variation acquired and maintained by social learning, then culture is common in nature. However, cumulative cultural evolution resulting in behaviors that no individual could invent on their own is limited to humans, song birds, and perhaps chimpanzees. Circumstantial evidence suggests that cumulative cultural evolution requires the capacity for observational learning. Here, we analyze two models the evolution of psychological capacities that allow cumulative cultural evolution. Both models suggest that the conditions which allow the evolution of (...) such capacities when rare are much more stringent than the conditions which allow the maintenance of the capacities when common. This result follows from the fact that the assumed benefit of the capacities, cumulative cultural adaptation, cannot occur when the capacities are rare. These results suggest why such capacities may be rare in nature. (shrink)

Среди физиков и космологов нет единства мнений по проблемам первых стадий истории Универсума. Предполагается, что наша Вселенная поя-вилась примерно 13,82 млрд лет назад из неизвестного состояния. Пред-ставление, распространившееся в 1970-х гг., что она появилась из сингу-лярности (то есть состояния неопределенно малой величины и неопреде-ленно большой плотности материи) в результате необычайной силы Большого взрыва, хотя и разделяется до сих пор многими, устарело. В ре-зультате появления теории инфляции многие сложности теории Боль-шого взрыва удалось устранить, однако вопрос о самом Большом взрыве (часто называемом (...) горячим взрывом) оказался сильно запутан термино-логически и теоретически. Поэтому в современных исследованиях часто можно встретить только упоминания о Большом взрыве, но не ясное описание этого события. В современной литературе описания стадии горячего Большого взрыва после стадии разогрева обычно не дается. Но следует иметь в виду, что, добавив в понятие «Большой взрыв» детерминатив «горячий», нередко подразумевают, что был еще один Большой взрыв – доинфляци-онный, который то ли предшествовал начальной квантовой флуктуации, то ли явился началом инфляции. Однако его описание и характеристики являются еще более неясными, чем горячего Большого взрыва. В резуль-тате такой терминологической и теоретической путаницы все чаще упоминания о Большом взрыве среди физиков выглядят просто как дань традиции, которую они не осмеливаются нарушить, а потому такие упоминания носят скорее ритуальный, чем наполненный конкретным со-держанием характер. В целом представляется, что самая начальная ис-тория Вселенной вполне может обойтись без использования понятия «Большой взрыв», применяя схему: флуктуация (что бы ее ни вызвало) – инфляция – постинфляционный разогрев. В статье дается анализ совре-менных космологических взглядов на самое начало нашей Вселенной и ука-зывается на наиболее важные противоречия в них. (shrink)

"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'Westt's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changing world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike....Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture for the first time." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound (...) philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume. (shrink)

This article analyzes some important aspects of socioeconomic and political development of the world in the near future. The future always stems from the present. The first part of the article is devoted to the study of some crucial events of the present, which could be regarded as precursors of forthcoming fundamental changes. In particular, it is shown that the turbulent events of late 2010 and 2011 in the Arab World may well be regarded as a start of the global (...) reconfiguration. The article also offers an analysis of some aspects of the global financial system that, according to the authors, notwithstanding all its negative points, performs certain important positive functions including the ?insurance? of social guaranties at the global scale. The second part of the article considers some global scenarios of the World System's new future and describes a few characteristics of the forthcoming ?Epoch of New Coalitions.? The article attempts to answer such questions as the following: What are the implications of the economic weakening of the United States as the World System center? Will the future World System have a leader? Will it experience a global governance deficit? Will the world fragmentation increase? (shrink)

Mesoudi et al.'s case can be improved by expanding to compelling selectionist explanations elsewhere in the social sciences and by seeing that natural selection is an instance of general selectionist process. Obstacles include the common use of extreme idealizations and optimality evidence, the copresence of nonselectionist social processes, and the fact that selectionist explanations often presuppose other kinds of social explanations. (Published Online November 9 2006).

An article of the famous historian of Ancient philosophy is translated into Russian for the participants of educational project “ΤΕΧΝΗ. Theoretical foundations of Arts, sciences and technology in the Greco-Roman World". Original publication: “Plotinus and the Gnostics on the Generation of Matter”, Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought, Essays in honour of A. H. Armstrong, éds. H. J. Blumenthal, R. A. Markus. London: Variorum publications, 1981, pp. 108–123.