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World Civlization Identified with Five Epochs of History Comparative Civilizations Review Volume 46 Number 46 Spring 2002 Article 3 4-1-2002 World Civlization Identified with Five Epochs of History William McGaughey Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr Recommended Citation McGaughey, William (2002) "World Civlization Identified with Five Epochs of History," Comparative Civilizations Review: Vol. 46 : No. 46 , Article 3. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol46/iss46/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Comparative Civilizations Review by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. McGaughey: World Civlization Identified with Five Epochs of History 8 WORLD CIVILIZATION IDENTIFIED WITH FIVE EPOCHS OF HISTORY WILLIAM MCGAUGHEY Historical and Sociological Approaches to Civilization In contemplating civilizations, it is possible to approach these enti- ties sociologically and learn about them through description of the var- ious facets of their societies and cultures. In such a way, Alexis De Tocqueville described U.S. society in the 1830s, and Robert and Helen Lynd described "Middletown" America in the 1920s. The life of a com- munity is seen in a collection of snapshots taken at roughly the same time. Another approach is historical. The assumption here is that a civ- ilization can be known by the story which leads from its past to its pres- ent and beyond. This story narrates important events that explain how the present society came to be. The approach to civilizations presented in this paper is historical rather than sociological. The study of civiliza- tions becomes close to being a study of world history. In fact, world his- tory might be considered the story of civilizations. World History and Comparative Civilizations The purpose of this paper is to present a scheme of world history and comparative civilizations which I believe will help to make the accumulation of historical experience more intelligible. This scheme is presented in a fuller version in my book. Five Epochs of Civilization: World History as Emerging in Five Civilizations, which was published last year. The book was reviewed by Matthew Melko on June 1, 2001, at the 30th annual meeting of the ISCSC on the Newark campus of Rutgers University. I made a presentation of its concepts at a workshop on the following day. This paper will respond to points made in Professor Melko's review (see page 138), and in subsequent discus- sions, as well as explain the book's thesis. Melko considered the title of the book to be "appropriate," but the subtitle and chapter titles "misleading." The word "civilization(s)" appears twice in the title and subtitle, once as a qualifier for an epoch of history and once as an end toward which world history may be pro- ceeding. This would be one point of confusion needing to be clarified. In my book, there is a certain convergence between the concept of an Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2002 1 Comparative Civilizations Review, Vol. 46 [2002], No. 46, Art. 3 WILLIAM MCGAUGHEY 9 "epoch" and of a "civilization," but there are also differences. An epoch is a period of time. A civilization is a social or cultural system. The apparent confusion may perhaps be resolved by suggesting that histori- cal epochs are defined and distinguished from one another by having a certain content which is associated with a civilization. Historical turn- ing points, which mark the beginning and end of epochs, are times when one civilization replaces another. In this way, world history and the study of civilizations are reconciled. Civilizations and Societies Ernest Gellner, quoted by Leonidas Donskis, has proposed that "the proper study of mankind is human groups and institutions." I would pro- pose that, with respect to world history, those groups are civilizations. What is a civilization? Is it a society—i.e., a community of people—or is it a society's culture? The book, Five Epochs of Civilization, comes down on the side of saying that civilization is culture. In this respect, its point of view differs from that of Arnold Toynbee. Oswald Spengler, and most ISCSC members who would hold that civilizations are geo- graphically distinguished societies that have existed at various times. There is a Chinese society that Toynbee broke down into a "Sinic" civ- ilization (to describe its earlier version) and a "Far Eastern" civilization (its later version). Similarly, there have been Indie, Hindu, Hellenic, Mayan, Minoan, Western Christian, and other civilizations associated with peoples who lived in particular places and times. Some of these civilizations are extinct while a few have continued. A goal of discus- sions at a recent ISCSC conference has been to compile a definitive list of the major or "mainstream" civilizations, with a certain consensus solidifying behind the following: Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Minoan, Classical, Islamic, Byzantine, Western, African, Mesoamerican, and Andean. Arnold Toynbee identified the appropriate entity to be studied in history as a "society." He defined a "civilization" as a type of society. A society consists of a set of human communities which have a common culture. Another name for civilization according to him might be a "civ- ilized society." A civilized society has certain characteristics which dis- tinguish it from "uncivilized" or "primitive" societies. One such feature would be the capacity for history. Such societies develop towards newer and more complex forms of social organization. Through written histo- ry, they also remember the process by which the changes took place. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol46/iss46/3 2 McGaughey: World Civlization Identified with Five Epochs of History 10 COMPARATIVE CIVILIZATIONS REVIEW Primitive societies, on the other hand, are bound to repetitious tradition. They remain in much the same form for thousands of years. Their col- lective memory consists of oral folklore and myths. If civilization were a society (as Toynbee regarded it), this entity would consist of a certain race of people sharing an organizational structure and communal experience. Another possibility would be to define civilization in terms of the society's culture. The cultural identi- ty would be distinct from the group of people who embraced the culture. By this definition, civilizations would change when their cultures change, not when there is a change in political organization. By the sec- ond standard, civilization did not fall when Germanic barbarians over- ran the territories of the west Roman empire because there was conti- nuity in Christianity, which was the main element of its culture. The barbarian tribes invading Europe quickly converted to this religion. It was only when the Christian faith lost its grip upon west European cul- ture in Renaissance times that this civilization fell. So the selection of one definition or another for civilizations has an impact upon the desig- nation of historical turning points. The Problem of Pluralistic Societies It is evident that racially- or ethnically-based societies are scattered throughout the earth. For millennia, most of these societies had scant knowledge of or contact with each other, and could hardly have had a common history. World historians have a problem with this. Since his- tory is a story, the story of world history would have to be the separate stories of all these scattered societies. This scheme is organizationally untidy. Historians face the problem of deciding how much space to give to each people's history and how the different histories are related to each other. World historians today emphasize contacts between civilizations, suggesting that these contacts provided the impetus for cultural change. Such change, they say, is the stuff of history. That partially solves the problem of fragmented history, but it ignores the internal mechanism of change within societies, analogous to life cycles in living organisms, which Spengler, Toynbee, and others have noted. Societies and cultures do, on their own accord, begin, mature, and grow old. This, too, affects the course of history. The scheme presented in Five Epochs of Civilization regards civi- lizations as worldwide cultural systems. World history, then, becomes a Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2002 3 Comparative Civilizations Review, Vol. 46 [2002], No. 46, Art. 3 WILLIAM MCGAUGHEY 11 matter of narrating events to show how the civilizations follow each other. A single story, albeit fragmented at certain points, would suffice to present world history. There is, of course, a question of deciding how much space in the history books to give to particular events or to par- ticular peoples' histories. If historical coverage gravitates towards cre- ative activities more than ones which simply maintain what has gone before, then those societies which have initiated important changes in human culture merit relatively greater space in the history books. For example, Sumerian society merits greater historical attention than its power or size of populations would warrant because it initiated writing, commercial accounting, and other features of urban society. However, this "urban society" must be worldwide, or at least extended to many other societies besides the Sumerian, for the argument to hold. With respect to space given to particular peoples' histories in books of world history, I think that the size of human populations ought to set certain parameters. India and China, for instance, have held 40 to 50 percent of the world's population during the last 2,000 years. A world history respecting the volume of human experience would not want to neglect the histories of those two areas and their people. It can also be argued that "person-years" of experience indicate the volume of history as it progresses through time. Since world population has increased from 265 million persons in 1000 A.D.
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