Peter Turchin

Peter Valentinovich Turchin (; born 1957) is a Russian-American evolutionary anthropologist, specializing in cultural evolution and cliodynamics—mathematical modeling and statistical analysis of the dynamics of historical societies. He is a professor at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology as well as in the Department of Anthropology and in the Department of Mathematics. , he is a director of the Evolution Institute.
Early life and education.
Peter Turchin was born in 1957 in Obninsk, Russia, and in 1964 he moved with his family to Moscow. In 1975 he enrolled at Moscow State University's Faculty of Biology and studied there until 1977, when his father, Soviet dissident Valentin Turchin, was exiled from the Soviet Union. In 1980 Turchin received a B.A. ("cum laude") in biology from New York University, and in 1985 a Ph.D. in zoology from Duke University.
Career.
Turchin has made contributions to the fields of population ecology, cultural evolution, and historical dynamics. He is one of the founders of cliodynamics, the scientific discipline at the intersection of historical macrosociology, cliometrics, and mathematical modeling of social processes. Turchin developed an original theory explaining how large historical empires evolve by the mechanism of multilevel selection. His research on secular cycles has contributed to our understanding of the collapse of complex societies as has his re-interpretation of Ibn Khaldun's notion of "asabiyya" as "collective solidarity".
One of Turchin's most prominent fields of research is his study of the hypothesis that population pressure causes increased warfare. Turchin, in collaboration with Korotayev, has shown that such negative results do not falsify the population-warfare hypothesis. Population and warfare are dynamical variables. If their interaction causes sustained oscillations, then we do not in general expect to find strong correlation between the two variables measured at the same time (that is, unlagged). Turchin and Korotayev have explored mathematically what the dynamical patterns of interaction between population and warfare (focusing on internal warfare) might be in stateless and state societies. Next, they tested the model predictions in several empirical case studies: early modern England, Han and Tang China, and the Roman Empire. Their empirical results have supported the population-warfare theory: Turchin and Korotayev have found that there is a tendency for population numbers and internal warfare intensity to oscillate with the same period but shifted in phase (with warfare peaks following population peaks). Furthermore, they have demonstrated that the rates of change of the two variables behave precisely as predicted by the theory: population rate of change is negatively affected by warfare intensity, while warfare rate of change is positively affected by population density.
In 2010 Turchin published research using 40 combined social indicators to predict that there would be worldwide social unrest in the 2020s. He subsequently cited the success of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign as evidence that "negative trends seem to be accelerating" and that there has been an "unprecedented collapse of social norms governing civilized discourse". In 2020, Turchin and Jack Goldstone predicted that political and civic unrest in the United States would continue regardless of the party in power until a leader took action to reduce inequality and improve the social indicators that are tracked in their research.
Works.
Turchin has published over 200 scientific articles (including more than a dozen in "Nature", "Science", or "PNAS") and at least eight books. He is the founder of the journal, "Cliodynamics", "...dedicated to 'the search for general principles explaining the functioning and dynamics of historical societies'", and manages a blog, Cliodynamica.