Practice question · Multiple choice
Ibn Khaldun’s asabiyyah rises in the desert and decays in the city over about four generations. Why does that count as a model where Spengler’s organic seasons do not?
Hints
- Ask which claim a counter-example could show to be wrong.
- One names a mechanism; the other names a resemblance.
Show the answer
D. Because it names a variable that can be watched, and a tempo
Why
Cohesion and a four-generation tempo are commitments: a case that keeps its cohesion for ten generations embarrasses the theory. A civilisation that has an autumn because civilisations have autumns cannot be embarrassed.
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?
- 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?
- For Toynbee, a civilization grows best when its challenge is as severe as possible.
- Match each theorist to their signature and their flaw.