Cyclic concept of the history

Gradually, the theories of cyclic and periodic reiterations of the historical process arose. The Old Indian philosophical thought distinguished three different concepts of changes: the theory of progress, theory of regress, and theory of big cycles.
All the world history, according to the concept of thinkers of ancient Persia, has one big cycle which is composed from many fluctuations. The Chinese philosopher Confucius proposed the theory of periodicity and recurrence of small social cycles in three, nine, eighteen, twenty seven, and thirty
years.
The most famous representative of the cyclic concept of the history in ancient Greece, Plato, thought that the history of any people successively passes through three stages birth, blooming, and destruction. Plato also marked small cycles in the change of forms of governing from the tyranny through the aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and ochlocracy to a new tyranny.

By analyzing the reasons for many revolutions occurred in old times, Aristotle stated that they have analogous reasons, and the history repeats itself in this aspect.
N. Machiavelli asserted that the states pass from the state of order to that of disorder and then pass from the chaos to a new order. At present, analogous ideas are advanced by synergetics which considers order and chaos as one matrix of social changes. J. Bodin emphasized the existence of periodicity and rhythms in social changes.

Finally, in the work “New science” by G. Vico, the cyclic concept of the history and social changes finds its most systematized presentation. G. Vico admitted that all nations go over the cycles of its appearance, development, disintegration, and end and recognized the external distinction of cycles which are repeated by simultaneously emphasizing their internal and essential identity.
P. Sorokin also gives the characteristic to cyclic theories which existed at the beginning of the XXth century. Periodic cycles and rhythms include: 24-hour cycles and rhythms, 7-day cycle, annual cycles, 3–4-year cycles, 60-year cycles, centenary cycles, etc.

The duration of a cycle can be different. O. Spengler divides the history of development of closed cultures into 1200-year periods, moreover, there exist the cycles of the protohistory, the history proper, and the post-history.
Economic cycles   by M. Kondrat’ev cover 60- and 120-year cycles. In addition to periodic rhythms and cycles, there exist aperiodic ones, among which P. Sorokin named the cycle of inventions (ascent, plateau, and descent), cycle of a social process (copying, research, opposition, and adaptation), cycle
of social institutions and organizations (appearance, growth, differentiation, and disintegration), and cycles in the life of ideology and ideas (three stages: this is impossible; something is in this; this is well known).

In general, a man, the society, and various civilizations undergo simultaneously the action of many cycles with different complexity and hierarchy (from big space cycles to little physiological ones). It is worth advancing the hypothesis about that the greater cycles, which belong to the upper levels of the hierarchy, as if subordinate the development of lesser cycles by rhythm and periodicity. At the same time, the “failure” of several cycles of lower levels can, probably, break the dynamics of development of big cycles.

Society and civilization, as a man, pass the big vital cycle in its development which, in turn, consists of, by the authors’ hypothesis, five epochal cycles. Moreover, the ontogenetic development of a person can be described by four small cycles of socialization and one (final) big epochal cycle of man’s self-realization. The epochal cycles of a society, on the contrary, develop from the big cycle of the protohistory to small cycles of society’s selfrealization.
The ontogenesis of development of a person and the genesis of development of the humanity (civilization) are similar (by form). The general view of the correlation of forms of the ontogenetic development of a person, society, and civilization is given on Fig. 3.
To simulate the process of social development, we introduce the notion of universal epochal cycle. Each specific cycle forms the separate phases replacing one another: revolution — involution — co-evolution — evolution revolution.

In this case, a revolution is a distinctive summary and original point of development of a public system. On this stage of a cycle, a lived historical period is generalized and the choice of a new way of development is realized.
The principal form of activity of historical subjects on this stage of the universal epochal cycle is the emotional-motivative activity. It displays in an increase of the field of the social freedom from the obligations and chains of the old social structure. This transient period is associated with a radical change of the societal characteristics of a society. On this stage of development, the freedom
of an individual which is objectively limited by the state of the war of all against all generates a qualitatively new political system. One observes oscillations of the degree of freedom from anarchy to dictatorship. The economy is in a chaotic state and forms a new socio-cultural paradigm of management due to the change of owners of property.