Multi-Evolutionism or Non-Linear Evolution Theory

Contextual Quote

"The notion of evolution is not popular in contemporary Anthropology. Many researchers do not use it preferring to write about transformation, transit, or change. Evolution for them is synonymous to dogmatic understanding of human history (Yoffee 2005; Pauketat 2008). However, even critics of evolutionism do not appear to reject the very fact of continuous social change. In prehistory people were hunters and gatherers and were integrated in small bands. Later some of them experienced sedentarization and transition to food production, began to found towns and invent complex tools. It would be ridiculous to reject such changes. Another point is that contemporary vision of cultural transformations differs greatly from the naïve ideas of the 19th century evolutionists (see, e.g., Earle 2002; Claessen 2000; Carneiro 2003, Marcus 2008; Hanks, Lin-duff 2009; Earle, Kristiansen 2010 etc.). Contemporary approaches are more flexible and are based on a much more considerable set of evidence. That is why it would be wrong to criticize the scholars of the past for their knowledge of something worse than ours. They ought to be estimated in comparison with their contemporaries. So, we believe that the notion of evolution has a right to exist, and for already several decades we have been elaborating the ideas that can be called “new wave evolutionism”, or Multi-Evolutionism or Non-Linear Evolution Theory)."

- A_Korotayev_and_D_Bondarenko et al. [1]

More information

Articles

* Article: Cosmic Evolution and Universal Evolutionary Principles. By Leonid Grinin. In: [[Evolution Almanac]]: Evolution: From Big Bang to Nanorobots.

URL = https://www.sociostudies.org/almanac/articles/cosmic_evolution_and_universal_evolutionary_principles/

"The present article attempts at combining Big History potential with the potential of Evolutionary Studies in order to achieve the following goals: 1) to apply the historical narrative principle to the description of the star-galaxy era of the cosmic phase of Big History;

2) to analyze both the cosmic history and similarities and differences between evolutionary laws, principles, and mechanisms at various levels and phases of Big History.

As far as I know, nobody has approached this task in a systemic way yet. It appears especially important to demonstrate that many evolutionary principles, patterns, regularities, and rules, which we tend to find relevant only for higher levels and main lines of evolution, can be also applied to cosmic evolution."

Books

* Book: Alternatives of Social Evolution / Ed. by N. Kradin, A. Korotayev, & D. Bondarenko. Vladivostok: FEB RAS, 2000

URL = [2]

"The first part includes theoretical studies of non-linear evolution:

1 Problems, Paradoxes, and Prospects of Evolutionism Henri J.M.Claessen

2 Alternativity of Social Evolution: Introductory Notes Andrey V. Korotayev, Nikolay N. Kradin, Victor de Munck, and Valeri A. Lynsha

3 Process VS. Stages: A False Dichotomy in Tracing the Riseof the State Robert L. Carneiro

4 The Change of Non-Change: Evolution of Human Regimesand the Structure of World History Nikolai S. Rozov

5 Cultural Evolution: Systems and Meta-System Alex Brown

6 East and West in History: A Short Abstract Leonid S.Vasiliev