Cyclical Theory

(Reporting)

Submitted by:

Lesly Ann T. Rio

Shayne Almazon
Aimee louisse Pagon
Maryjoey Illut

Submitted to:

Mr. Jeffrey P. Razonabe RSW

Cyclical Theory

• Describes societies going through rise and fall rather than development in a single unilinear pattern. It
is a continuous process. This cyclical theory means a model utilized by historian Arthur Schlesinger
to try and explicate the fluctuations in politics through American History. Liberalism and conservatism
are rooted from the “national mood” that shows a consistent shift in nationwide involvement between
open purpose and non-public interest. Each of such cycles includes any phase of principal public
interest, any transition phase, along with a phase of private interest. It is also called the rise and fall
theory.

Cyclical change is a variation on unilinear theory which was developed by Oswald Spengler (Decline
of the West, 1918) and Arnold J. Toynbee (A Study of History, 1956). They argued that societies and
civilizations change according to cycles of rise, decline and fall just as individual persons are born,
mature, grow old, and die.

According to German thinker Spengler, every society has a predetermined life cycle—birth, growth,
maturity and decline. Society, after passing through all these stages of life cycle, returns to the original
stage and thus the cycle begins again. On the basis of his analysis of Egyptian, Greek Roman and many
other civilizations, he concluded that the Western civilization is now on its decline. The world
renowned British historian Toynbee has also upheld this theory. He has studied the history of various
civilizations and has found that every civilization has its rise, development and fall such as the
civilization of Egypt. They have all come and gone, repeating a recurrent cycle of birth, growth,
breakdown and decay. He propounded the theory of “challenge and response” which means that those
who can cope with a changing environment survive and those who cannot die.

Oswald Spengler

• He is a German school teacher, in his book “The Decline of the West-1918” pointed out that the fate
of civilizations was matter of “destiny”. Each civilization is like a biological organism and has a similar
life cycle: birth maturity, old age and death.

• The Decline of the West is described in the subtitle as a “morphology of history.” History is not the
study of a coherent evolution (Spengler contra Hegel); it is a comparative study of cultures. Spengler
dismissed with vehemence the traditional periodization of world history in terms of ancient, medieval,
and modern. Instead he concentrated on eight separate cultures: those of Egypt, India, Babylon,
China, classical antiquity, Islam, the West (Faustian culture), and Mexico.

For the linear view of history Spengler thus substituted a cyclical theory such as had last been
elaborated in the West by Vicon in the early eighteenth century (though one had been propounded in
the nineteenth century by the Russian writer Nikolai I. Danilevskii).

Arnold Toynbee

• A British Historian with enough sociological insight has offered a somewhat more promising theory
of social change. He studies 21 civilizations of the world and presented his theory of social change in
his book “A Study of History”. After studying the development of different civilizations, he found a
simple and created his theory called challenge and response theory of social change.

• According to him, every civilization is given a challenge by nature and man. To face this challenge,
mas requires adaptation. Also to respond to this challenge he forms civilizations and culture.
• Every society faces challenges at first. Challenges posed by the environment it may in internal and
external enemies meaning outside society or inside in the society.

• The achievements of civilizations consist of its successful response of challenge: If it cannot mount an
effective response, it dies. It means that if a society cannot adapt the challenge or don’t know to solve it
they will die. Toynbee’s views are more optimistic those he does and believe that civilization will
inevitably decay.

Pitirim Sorokin

• The Russian American Sociologists, Pitirim Sorokin in his book “Social and Culture Dynamics-
1938” has offered another explanation of social change. His work has had a more lasting impact on
sociologist thinking. Instead of viewing civilizations into terms of development and decline he
proposed that they alternate or fluctuate between two cultural extremes: The sensate and ideational

• In the history of sociological theory, he is important for distinguishing two kinds of sociocultural
systems: “sensate” (empirical, dependent on and encouraging natural sciences) and “ideational”
(mystical, anti-intellectual, dependent on authority and faith).

• Sorokin believed that the postmedieval Western sensate culture was in its last stages and that the study
of nonsexual altruistic love as a sciencewas needed to avert worldwide chaos. In his view, this necessity
followed from his principle of polarization, according to which the moral indifference prevailing under
ordinary circumstances is supplanted, for the duration of a crisis, by the extremes of selfishness and
altruism.