Ian Morris in his book “Why the West rules – for now” (2010) created something remarkable: an index of social advancement which allows us to compare societies from the past, present times and – possibly – future. The index consists of four variables: energy capture, war making capacity, organization and information technology. Apart from usefulness of the index in prognostics, he fulfilled something that other academics have not even dreamt of.
To put this thought bluntly, he accomplished something which I myself vaguely considered as a goal towards which one should tend in academic career, while studying philosophy of history.
Time to redefine the goals.
If you are least a bit interested in history, you must read this. Forget Hegel, forget the others. Morris is empirical, adequate and modest.
First of all, listen to him explaining the Grand Work on Youtube… in only 3 minutes !
If you are inclined to know more, download the detailed methodological account covering significant amounts of the book content here (PDF).
Jared Diamond said about this book:
“Here you have three books wrapped into one: an exciting novel that happens to be true; an entertaining but thorough historical account of everything important that happened to any important people in the last ten millennia; and an educated guess about what will happen in the future. Read, learn, and enjoy!”
I totally agree.
GREG LEWICKI 
Andrzej
04/03/2011
West rules, bo na zachodzie, w krajach tzw “doświadczonych demokracji” politycy to intelektualiści… http://youtu.be/0YIjUj3BB7o
greglewicki
04/03/2011
West rules because Western politicians are “intellectuals”. Yes, it makes a difference, but the question remains – what is the origin of this difference? Culture? If affirmative – what makes a difference IN culture? Morris claims, probably after Jared Diamond, that what people do is their “initial conditions” multiplied by “time”. He assumes that every society has similar percentage of creative people, mediocre people and total failures. There is something similar to ergodic hypothesis behind his assumptions, namely, a conviction that every system will realize its ALL possibilities through time. Diversified geography understood as initial conditions is a basis for cultural differences. As a result, if we think of two identical cultures starting in identical place (think of Sid Meir’s “Civilization”) and having similar basis, they would end up similarly in 2000 years from now. The differences would be statistically small and stem from different dice throwing outcomes. Convincing?
Andrzej
04/04/2011
well I think, if it comes to the “ad genesis” argument, the equal “start” of civilizations is conditioned by natural resources and geography…
Greg Lewicki
09/21/2011
Morris’ recent contribution featured in “The Economist” (16 Sept 2011)
http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2011/09/ian-morris-western-dominance?fsrc=scn%2Ffb%2Fwl%2Fvd%2Farockyroad