Peter Turchin

Peter Turchin
Born	1957 (age 66–67) Obninsk, Soviet Union
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Cultural evolution, cliodynamics (historical dynamics)
Institutions	University of Connecticut, Evolution Institute
Alma mater	New York University
Known for	contributions to population biology and historical dynamics

Peter Valentinovich Turchin (Russian: Пётр Валенти́нович Турчи́н; born 1957) is a Russian-American scientist, specializing in cultural evolution and "cliodynamics"—mathematical modeling and statistical analysis of the dynamics of historical societies.

Biography

Turchin was born in Obninsk, Russia, in 1957 and in 1964 moved to Moscow. In 1975 he entered the Faculty of Biology of the Moscow State University and studied there until 1977, when his father, the Soviet dissident Valentin Turchin, was exiled from the USSR. He got his B.A. in biology from the New York University (cum laude) in 1980 and Ph.D. in zoology in 1985 from Duke University.

Peter Turchin is a professor at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology as well as in the Department of Anthropology and in the Department of Mathematics. He is the vice president of the Evolution Institute.

Work

Clio—detail from The Allegory of Painting by Johannes Vermeer

Peter Turchin has made contributions to population ecology, cultural evolution, and historical dynamics. He is one of the founders of cliodynamics, the new 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. His research on secular cycles has contributed to our understanding of the collapse of complex societies as has his re-interpretation of Ibn Khaldun's asabiyya notion as "collective solidarity".

Of special importance is his study of the hypothesis that population pressure causes increased warfare. This hypothesis has been recently criticized on empirical grounds. Studies focusing on specific historical societies and analyses of cross-cultural data have failed to find positive correlation between population density and incidence of warfare. Turchin, in collaboration with Korotayev, has shown that such 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 China, and the Roman Empire. 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.

Publications

Turchin has published over 200 scientific articles (including more than a dozen in Nature, Science, or PNAS) and six "books". Books

Selected journal articles

• Turchin P. (2006). Population Dynamics and Internal Warfare: A Reconsideration. Social Evolution & History 5(2): 112–147 (with Andrey Korotayev).

External links

• Cliodynamics Web Page
• Social Evolution Forum