Evolution Laws of Nature and Society in the Process of Modernization

Abstract

Basing on the results of his own study of resource and territorial factors of modernization, the author analyses the laws of social macroevolution formulated by the Russian scientists A.V. Korotayev and L.E. Grinin. The paper reveals both possibilities and difficulties of their application to the problem of modernization as a large-scale socio-historical transformation. It analyzes the concept of aromorphosis, reveals contradictions of the world-system approach in its application to the problem of modernization, and examines the hierarchy of social macroevolution factors and critical theses on classical evolutionism as a unilinear model of history. The “classical” approach to modernization is argued for, as well as the classical principles of evolutionism, which presumes the relative monolinearity of the historical process that reveals itself, for example, in the intensification of nature-society interaction under the influence of resource constraints. It is also maintained that determinism is stricter, and the laws of social development manifest themselves more steadily than A.V. Korotayev’s and L.E. Grinin’s conception assumes. An objection is raised against their understanding of “aromorphosis” that narrows the concept of modernization to recurrent economic, political and cultural rises. Instead, modernization is considered to be a long-term naturally determined historical process.