History of the Cycle-Based Interpretations of Human Evolution
Discussion
CARLOS A. MALLMANN and GUILLERMO A. LEMARCHAND:
“Early attempts at a conceptualization of political recurrent processes are found, for example, in Plato’s view (ca. 428–347 BC) that all historical processes consist of advances and retrogressions. For him these processes occurred in cycles. But, only the most prominent features are repeated, not the details. His theory of the immanent change of the political systems was based on the birth of a ‘‘new generation.’’ Aristotle (ca. 384–322 BC) is also responsible for the idea of the cyclical degeneration of forms of government that was taken up by Polybius (ca. 204–122 BC).
For Polybius, in his History (Book VI, 3), there are six kinds of governments, as in Aristotle, but they occur in a definite series. According to Polybius’ way of thinking, the cycle is established by natural law: it is through a natural self-organizing process that constitutions, states, and arts change, disappear, and finally return to the point at which they started. According to him, this interpretation may be used as a basis for prophecies.
For Polybius, the evolution of human societies was likened to the biological cycle of growth, maturity, senescence, and death. Societies, like organisms, eventually die. He also predicted the fall of the Roman Empire 600 years before it actually happened. To Polybius and other ancient writers, there was little question of whether dominant states such as Rome were sustainable; it was assumed in advance that they were not.
The proper focus of intellectual activity consisted therefore of determining where one was situated in the historical cycle, and of making deductions from these various corollary effects in the natural and social worlds. The historical cycle determines everything.
Before Polybius was translated from Greek to Latin and printed in 1473, we find in Giovanni Villani’s Chronicle of Florence, an emphasis on the cyclical pattern. Villani’s (ca.1275–1348) interpretation of the political cycles depends on the supposed psychological fact that success engenders pride, pride sin, and sin brings on decline. Later, Francesco Guicciardini (ca. 1483–1540) in his Ricordi argues that the future repeats the past and that only the names of things change.”