Global History as a Sequence of Transient Economic Foci

Abstract

Empirical evidence shows that the sub-sectors of national economies are likely to follow a certain regularity in their phase of emergence and decrease, meas-ured by the relative share of their contribution to the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This indicates the possibility of viewing techno-socio-economic evolution as a sequence of transient economic foci which corresponds to societal preferences, even ‘values.’ A step of generalisation suggests that any ‘socie-tal value’ can be understood as the second derivative of a characteristic parameter forming a trend. In a view perceiving long-term history as a sequence of regular phases (be these generated by hypothesized cycles or saturation effects), even these second derivatives undergo a principal change and switch from positive to negative signs. These epochs of ‘switching values’ are both logically necessary, historically perceivable and correlated with profoundly changing societal values. The author's Global Change Data Base (GCDB) serves as an empirical foundation for such interpretations of paths in worldwide statistics and provides statistical diagnosis of several transitions that occur in history and techno-socio-economic evolution: deforestation transition, economic transition and energy transition.