The Laws of History (Hardcover, New)

The quest for the laws underlying the history of human societies has occupied some of the greatest thinkers in history, from Heraclitus and Plato to Marx and J.S. Mill. And yet today historicism is widely considered to be intellectually discredited. In this unorthodox and trail-blazing work Graeme Snooks argues that it is possible to construct a scientific theory of human nature. On the basis of this paradigm shift the author lays bare the forces driving human society from its earlier beginnings to its present stage of evolution. The text is divided into two parts that combine methodological, sociological and historical reflection. Part I considers the nature of laws, the reasons we might expect to find them at work in history, and why their formulation escaped the great historicists of the past. Part II employs a novel inductive framework to draw out the general propositions underlying the different forms of human society. These general propositions concerning societal dynamics, historical change and institutional, are the laws of history.