APPENDIX C, Course Reference No.

Cyclical theories take a different approach and look at the rise and fall of civilization.
Evolutionists tend to be relatively optimistic people who see humankind as striving to reach
new heights in a challenging future while cyclists tend to be relatively pessimistic individuals
who forecast the demise of every civilization. According to this perspective, societies attain
a golden age (in art, literature, science, etc.) after which decay sets in through conflicts, wars
and social deterioration.

Pitirim Sorokin. Sorokin believed that culture is composed of a series of parts that
are unified around a fundamental principle and a basic value. He believed that at any given
period society swings between two opposite types of culture sensate and ideational. The
sensate periods are those in which society emphasizes materialistic, pleasure-seeking values
while ideational periods are those in which ideals and spiritual concerns are given emphasis.

Sorokin further argued that sociologists spend too much time studying destructive
social behaviors. If we wished to improve the human condition, we should learn how to make
people more humane, compassionate and giving. This concern led Sorokin to a decade-long
study of altruism and amitology. With support from the Lilly Endowment he established the
Harvard Center for Creative Altruism. The Center sponsored many theoretical and practical
research projects including seven books by Sorokin.

Mainstream sociologists were often skeptical about these projects and Sorokin
became somewhat of a marginal figure in the discipline. Critic Lewis Coser believed that the
altruism studies did not merit discussion as a contribution to sociological theory (Coser,
1977:491). However, in the 1960s the pendulum of neglect and silence began to swing in the
other direction. In 1962 the Bedminister Press reissued Social and Cultural Dynamics in a
four volume set. The following year, Sorokin's contributions were recognized in two
volumes: Philip J. Allen's Pitirim Sorokin in Review and Edward A. Tiryakian's festscrift
volume, Sociological Theory, Values and Sociocultural Change. These books restored
Sorokin to active consideration by American sociologists. Discussion of his ideas by Talcott
Parsons, Robert Merton, Wilbert Moore, Georges Gurvitch, Walter Firey, Charles Loomis,
Matilda White Riley, N.S. Timasheff, Bernard Barber, Alex Inkeles and many others
demonstrated that serious sociologists were taking Sorokin seriously.

Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (Blankenburg am Harz May 29, 1880 – May 8,
1936, Munich) was a German historian and philosopher, although his studies ranged
throughout mathematics, science, philosophy, history, and art. He is best known for his book
The Decline of the West in which he puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of
civilizations. A conservative supporter of authoritarianism, writing throughout World War I
and interwar period, he supported German hegemony in Europe. The National Socialists held
Spengler as an intellectual precursor, but Spengler's refusal to support Nazi ideas of racial
superiority, and his anti-Nazi work the Hour of Decision won him ostracism after 1933.

He contended that culture passes through the same stages of growth and decline as
individual: a period development, followed by maturity, eventual decline, and death. He
added that history followed definite laws of growth and decay that are observable in the
careers of all culture. Based on his studies of eight cultures, Spengler says that each culture
possesses a life span of approximately one thousand years.

A boundless mass of human being, flowing in a stream without banks; up-stream, a dark past wherein our time-
sense loses all powers of definition and restless or uneasy fancy conjures up geological periods to hide away an
eternally-unsolvable riddle; down-stream, a future even so dark and timeless -- such is the groundwork of the
Faustian picture of human history.

---Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, 1918

In this work, Spengler argued by analogy, in the manner of Hegel and Marx, that all
civilizations or cultures are subject to the same cycles of growth and decay in accordance
with predetermined "historical destiny." The soul of Western Civilization is dead. The age of
soulless expansionism and Caesarism is upon us. It is better for Western man, therefore, to be
engineer rather than poet, soldier rather than artist, politician rather than philosopher.
Spengler was more concerned with the present and future rather than with the origins of
civilization. His verdict greatly encouraged the Nazis although Spengler never became one
himself.

Arnold Toynbee. Toynbee was born in London as the son of the physician Joseph
Toynbee, a pioneering otolaryngologist in his time; the more famous universal historian
Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975), with whom he is often confused, was his nephew.
Toynbee attended public schools in Blackheath and Woolwich. In 1873 he began to study
political economy at Oxford, first at Pembroke College and from 1875 at Balliol College,
where he went on to teach after his graduation in 1878. His lectures on the history of the
industrial revolution in 18th and 19th century Britain proved widely influential; in fact,
Toynbee coined, or at least effectively popularised, the term "industrial revolution" in the
Anglophone world - in Germany and elsewhere it had been brought into circulation earlier by
Friedrich Engels, also under the impression of the industrial changes in Britain. Toynbee died
at age 30 in 1883, after his health had rapidly deteriorated probably due to exhaustion by
excessive work.

Toynbee, a British historian and philosopher, searched for patterns in the growth and
decay of civilizations. He stated that the breakdown of a civilization occurs when creative
minorities fail to respond successfully to challenges and gave way to dominant minorities
ruling merely by force over masses turned into proletariats. He predicted the development
of a universal religion combining the best in Western and Eastern traditions and leading to
the founding of a new order. He believed that the course of most civilization is uniform and
that civilizations arise in response to some challenge.
 The cyclical theory assumes that culture grow and decline and give way to one of the
other types of culture. On the societal level, social phenomena like wars, crimes, marriage
and birth rates, migration, etc. can be viewed from the cyclical perspective.

Today few scholars hold to cycle theories for they fail to account for other important
factors in change.

Cyclical theories exist in abundance; for instance, Ibn Khaldun has a cycle of Three
Generations: the first generation retains the strength and toughness of desert life, the second
becomes sedentary and adopts a life of luxury, the third has forgotten the life in the desert,
loses the group feeling, and are destroyed. 1 Giambattista Vico has a cycle similar to Hesiod’s
idea, where a nation follows this pattern: 1) Age of the Gods, family monarchies rule, 2) Age
of the Heroes, aristocracy rules, 3) Age of Men, democracies turn to civil monarchies. 2 These
are two cyclical theories that work well with the framework of the Chinese Dynastic Cycle;
all place varying degrees of progress or decline based on a timeline.
Toynbee’s discussion of the breakdown of civilizations contained a rather concise,
neat formula for the life cycle of a civilization.3
First stage- Challenge and response; Toynbee holds that only six civilizations
emerged from primitive beginnings (Sumerian, Egyptian, Minoan, Sinic,
Mayan, Andean), and that all others were “affiliated” civilizations, that
arose from others. 4
Second stage- Growth of civilizations; “field of action shifting from the external
environment to the interior of the civilization.” 5
Third stage- Breakdown of civilizations; “loss of self-determination”6
Fourth stage- Disintegration of civilizations; follows a pattern of 1) a time of
troubles, 2) a universal state 3) an interregnum. 7

Unit of Analysis
The unit of analysis in cyclical theory is the society.

Summar
Sorokin believed that culture is composed of a series of parts that are
y unified around a fundamental principle and a basic value. He believed that at any given
period society swings between two opposite types of culture sensate and ideational.

He contended that culture passes through the same stages of growth and decline as
individual: a period development, followed by maturity, eventual decline, and death. He
added that history followed definite laws of growth ands decay that are observable in the
careers of all culture. Based on his studies of eight cultures, Spengler says that each
culture possesses a life span of approximately one thousand years.

Toynbee’s discussion of the breakdown of civilizations contained a rather concise, neat

formula for the life cycle of a civilization.3
First stage- Challenge and response; Toynbee holds that only six civilizations
emerged from primitive beginnings (Sumerian, Egyptian, Minoan, Sinic,
 Mayan, Andean), and that all others were “affiliated” civilizations, that
arose from others. 4
Second stage- Growth of civilizations; “field of action shifting from the external
environment to the interior of the civilization.” 5
Third stage- Breakdown of civilizations; “loss of self-determination”6
Fourth stage- Disintegration of civilizations; follows a pattern of 1) a time of
troubles, 2) a universal state 3) an interregnum. 7

Reference

s a. Coser, Lewis A. 1977. Masters of sociological thought. 2nd ed. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich.

b. http://www.asanet.org/governance/sorokin.html

c. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler
d. http://www.historyguide.org/europe/spengler.html
e. http://www.theperfectamerican.com/Notes_page.htm

f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Toynbee

g. Puzon, Rowena. 2006. Compilation of Theories. A requirement of RD 704 course

under Dr. Fe L. Porciuncula.
h. Rivera, Fermina Talens. 2003. Compilation of theories and strategies of social
change.
spengler_oswald

Arnold Toynbee
1889-1975