Asabiya

In the second century BC, the Greek writer Polybius proposed that societies are like organisms, which are born, grow, age and die, leading him to predict the decline of the Roman Empire 600 years before the event. The idea of a mechanical science of history became popular in the 18th century, and by the 19th century was held by most "progressive" thinkers. Turchin's title (War and Peace and War) alludes to Tolstoy's speculations in War and Peace that history is deterministic, directed by "forces" such as those invoked by Isaac Newton.