Practice question · Match the pairs
Match each theorist to their signature and their flaw.
- Ibn Khaldun
- Spengler
- Toynbee
- Hegel and Marx
- Challenge and response, criteria too vague to test
- Asabiyyah with a cause and a tempo, and a narrow domain
- Organic seasons, an analogy with no mechanism
- A rising staircase rather than a turning wheel
Hints
- Each theorist offers a shape and carries a flaw.
- The one that works names what actually turns the wheel.
Show the answer
- Ibn Khaldun → Asabiyyah with a cause and a tempo, and a narrow domain
- Spengler → Organic seasons, an analogy with no mechanism
- Toynbee → Challenge and response, criteria too vague to test
- Hegel and Marx → A rising staircase rather than a turning wheel
Why
Three wheels and one staircase. The wheel that works is the one that named what turns it.
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?
- For Toynbee, a civilization grows best when its challenge is as severe as possible.