Analysing long-term historical trends – such as economic and technological changes, and changes to human welfare and values – could help decision-makers anticipate major events, prioritise resources and identify the most effective strategies for positively steering the future.
For example, research could focus on key inflection points that caused the world to rapidly transform in the past, or analyse which trends can be used to predict catastrophic events, in order to help humanity prepare for future events. Research could also seek to identify which trends appear most important for making the world a better place; for example those that seem to improve human wellbeing.
If you’re interested in this research direction, you might find helpful information in many of the other profiles we feature, as analysing long-term historical trends could help predict events and inform attempts to improve the world in many areas. For example, this kind of research could help predict great power wars and societal collapses, or improve our understanding of if and why humanity’s moral circle has widened over time. Understanding which historical trends have had the biggest positive impact on the world could also inform attempts to speed up progress and illuminate which metrics we should use to measure it.
See the talk below for an exploration of one approach to using historical trends to predict future events using cliodynamics.
Turchin, Peter & Sergey A. Nefedov (2009) Secular Cycles, Princeton University Press
Organisations
Seshat is an organisation creating a global history databank to analyse broad historical trends.
The research and grant-making foundation Open Philanthropy has done some work in this area – see here for an example.
Further resources
Big History is an interdisciplinary field that explores the history of the universe. Although this means looking at a history over a much longer timescale than we recommend in this profile, you may find researchers in these communities who are particularly open to the kinds of questions we include here.
There is an active European Big History network which holds regular meetings and the International Big History Association holds conferences.
Many history departments will consider research looking at broad historical trends to be outside the scope of academic historical research, however some universities have institutes or programmes focused on Big History, such as the Dominican University of California and the University of Amsterdam.
Our World in Data’s list of 12 key metrics to understand the state of the world.
Luke Muehlhauser’s post on whether the industrial revolution seems to have increased human wellbeing by analysing various metrics.
This spreadsheet from Holden Karnofsky mapping out historical events that seemed to have mattered most from the perspective of wellbeing and empowerment and this blog post about whether wellbeing has improved over time.
Contributors: This profile was last updated 31/12/22. Thanks to Elise Bohan for helpful feedback on this profile. All errors remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
