Practice question · True or false
For Toynbee, a civilization grows best when its challenge is as severe as possible.
Hints
- The challenge must fall between two failure modes.
- Too little gives no stimulus; too much simply destroys.
Show the answer
False
Why
He required the challenge to be moderate: too weak gives no stimulus, too harsh simply crushes. Sensible, and so vaguely specified that the severity can always be graded after the outcome is known.
Practise Cyclical Theories of History
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Cyclical Theories of History
- What makes Ibn Khaldun’s cycle a genuine model rather than a metaphor?
- Ibn Khaldun’s asabiyyah rises in the desert and decays in the city over about four generations. Why does that…
- Put Ibn Khaldun’s dynastic cycle in order.
- Cyclical theories of history become popular during periods of perceived decline. What methodological warning…
- Sort each feature: does it make a theory testable or unfalsifiable?
- Match each theorist to their signature and their flaw.