Peter Valentinovich Turchin (russian: Пётр Валенти́нович Турчи́н; born 1957) is a Russian-

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

complexity scientist, specializing in an area of study he and his colleagues developed called

cliodynamics Cliodynamics () is a transdisciplinary area of research that integrates cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the '' longue durée'', and the construction and anal ...

—

mathematical modeling A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences (such as physics, b ...

and

statistical analysis Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying distribution of probability.Upton, G., Cook, I. (2008) ''Oxford Dictionary of Statistics'', OUP. . Inferential statistical analysis infers propertie ...

of the dynamics of historical societies. He is currently Editor-in-Chief at ''Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution''. , he is a director of the Evolution Institute.

Early life and education

Peter Turchin was born in 1957 in

Obninsk Obninsk (russian: О́бнинск) is a city in Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the bank of the Protva River southwest of Moscow and northeast of Kaluga. Population: History The history of Obninsk began in 1945 when the First Research In ...

, Russia, and in 1964 he moved with his family to

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

. In 1975 he enrolled at

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

's Faculty of Biology and studied there until 1977, when his father,

Soviet dissident Soviet dissidents were people who disagreed with certain features of Soviet ideology or with its entirety and who were willing to speak out against them. The term ''dissident'' was used in the Soviet Union in the period from the mid-1960s until ...

Valentin Turchin Valentin Fyodorovich Turchin (russian: Валенти́н Фёдорович Турчи́н, 14 February 1931 in Podolsk – 7 April 2010 in Oakland, New Jersey) was a Soviet and American physicist, cybernetician, and computer scientist. He d ...

, was exiled from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. In 1980, Turchin obtained

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

(''cum laude'') from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

, and in his Ph.D. in from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist Jam ...

in 1985.

Career

Throughout his career Turchin has made contributions to various fields, such as

economic history Economic history is the academic learning of economies or economic events of the past. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of economic theory to historical situations and i ...

and

historical dynamics Historical dynamics broadly includes the scientific modeling of history. This might also be termed computer modeling of history, historical simulation, or simulation of history - allowing for an extensive range of techniques in simulation and esti ...

. He is one of the founders of

, the scientific discipline at the intersection of historical macrosociology, cliometrics, and mathematical modeling of social processes. Turchin developed an original theory explaining how large historical empires evolve by the mechanism of

multilevel selection Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the level of the individual or gene. Early authors such as V. C. Wynne-Edwards and Konrad Lorenz argued that the beh ...

. His research on secular cyclesTurchin P. and Korotayev A. 2006
Population Dynamics and Internal Warfare: A Reconsideration
''

Social Evolution & History ''Social Evolution & History'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal focused on the development of human societies in the past, present, and future. In addition to original research articles, ''Social Evolution & History'' includes critical notes a ...

'' 5(2): 112–147; Turchin P. and Nefedov S. 2009
Secular Cycles

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

. has contributed to our understanding of the collapse of complex societies as has his re-interpretation of

Ibn Khaldun Ibn Khaldun (; ar, أبو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي, ; 27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732-808 AH) was an Arab The Historical Muhammad', Irving M. Zeitlin, (Polity Press, 2007), p. 21; "It is, of ...

's notion of ''

asabiyya 'Asabiyyah or 'asabiyya ( ar, عصبيّة, 'group feeling' or 'social cohesion') is a concept of social solidarity with an emphasis on unity, group consciousness, and a sense of shared purpose and social cohesion, originally used in the contex ...

'' as "collective solidarity"..Korotayev A.V., Khaltourina D.A
''Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends in Africa''.
Moscow: URSS, 2006. . One of Turchin's most prominent fields of research is his study of the

hypothesis A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obse ...

that

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction usi ...

pressure causes increased

warfare War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regu ...

. Turchin, in collaboration with Korotayev, has shown that negative results do not falsify the population-warfare hypothesis. Population and warfare are dynamical variables. If their interaction causes sustained oscillations, then we do not in general expect to find strong correlation between the two variables measured at the same time (that is, unlagged). Turchin and Korotayev have explored mathematically what the dynamical patterns of interaction between population and warfare (focusing on internal warfare) might be in stateless and state societies. Next, they tested the model predictions in several empirical case studies: early modern England, Han and

Tang Tang or TANG most often refers to: * Tang dynasty * Tang (drink mix) Tang or TANG may also refer to: Chinese states and dynasties * Jin (Chinese state) (11th century – 376 BC), a state during the Spring and Autumn period, called Tang (唐) ...

China, and the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Roman Republic, Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings aro ...

. Their empirical results have supported the population-warfare theory: Turchin and Korotayev have found that there is a tendency for population numbers and internal warfare intensity to oscillate with the same period but shifted in phase (with warfare peaks following population peaks). Furthermore, they have demonstrated that the rates of change of the two variables behave precisely as predicted by the theory: population rate of change is negatively affected by warfare intensity, while warfare rate of change is positively affected by population density. In 2010 Turchin published research using 40 combined social indicators to predict that there would be worldwide social unrest in the 2020s. He subsequently cited the success of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign as evidence that "negative trends seem to be accelerating" and that there has been an "unprecedented collapse of social norms governing civilized discourse". In 2020, Turchin and Jack Goldstone predicted that political and civic unrest in the United States would continue regardless of the party in power until a leader took action to reduce inequality and improve the social indicators that are tracked in their research.

Works

Turchin has published over 200 scientific articles (including more than a dozen in ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'', ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...

'', or ''

PNAS ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Scie ...

'') and at least eight books. He is the founder of the journal, ''

Cliodynamics Cliodynamics () is a transdisciplinary area of research that integrates cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the '' longue durée'', and the construction and anal ...

'', "...dedicated to 'the search for general principles explaining the functioning and dynamics of historical societies'", and manages a blog, Cliodynamica.

Books

* * * * * * * *

Selected journal articles

*
Article retracted on July 7, 2021
* * * *Turchin P. (2006)
Population Dynamics and Internal Warfare: A Reconsideration
''Social Evolution & History'' 5(2): 112–147 (with

Andrey Korotayev Andrey Vitalievich Korotayev (russian: link=yes, Андре́й Вита́льевич Корота́ев; born 17 February 1961) is a Russian anthropologist, economic historian, comparative political scientist, demographer and sociologist, ...

). * * *

References

External links

Social Evolution Forum
* *Maini, Alessandro. "On Historical Dynamics by P. Turchin". ''Biophysical Economics and Sustainability'' 5, No. 1 (4 February 2020): 3
DOI: 10.1007/s41247-019-0063-x
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turchin, Peter 1957 births Evolutionary biologists World system scholars Complex systems scientists Living people New York University alumni Duke University alumni University of Connecticut faculty Writers from Moscow Soviet emigrants to the United States American biologists