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Toynbee researched the problem of historical development at two levels: definite civilizations and definite countries. The most arguable hypothesis of Toynbee’s concept is the possibility of emergence of a universal civilization. On the other hand, his colossal theoretical work has become the well of philosophical, historical, and social ideas.

The presented above opinion concerns also the scientific heritage of Osvald Spengler (1880-1936). His book «Decline of Europe. Essay on Morphology of World History» has become the classics of modernism[35]. Such is the contraposition of the culture and civilization, which, being the progress of history, presents a gradual development of nonorganic and perished forms. A civilization is the inevitable destination of a culture[36]. Spengler compared the civilization with an organism experiencing the periods of childhood, youth, maturity and senility.

The idea of comparison of the social development with the ontogenesis of an individual is theoretically prospective. There appears a possibility of involvement of methodological concepts of psychology and societal psychology in the research. This will allow us to show the correlation between the socium and an individual. The main problem of social engineering that has something in common with the ideas of cyclic development is connected with the tasks of prognostication of social-historical processes[37].

Karl Popper, giving the name of «poverty of historicism» to the attempts of prophecies concerning the universal history which follows its predestined way, turns his attention to a principal impossibility of scientific forecast with the use of rational methods. First, there is no universal history of the mankind at all (there are only varied histories of different parts of the society). The second reason is that there exists a random, irrational, and unstable personal factor within the history, and, third, the human history is a unique and inimitable process[38]. However, the theoretical denial of Popper’s prognostic agnosticism is given by social synergetics – the science of regularities of the interaction of a social order and chaos. According to this theory, the essence of development of the social reality reduces neither to the one-sided enlargement of order (O. Comte) nor to the one-sided growth of a degree of freedom (chaos) (H. Spencer). The evolution of a dissipative structure (the synthesis of chaos and order) is the growth of a degree of synthesis of order and chaos, conditioned by the aspiration to a maximum stability[39].

Social synergetics has showed the groundlessness of the mixing of terms «aim» and «sense»: the absence of any aim does not mean the absence of any sense (movement to the superattractor or to the limit state. Has reached it, the system can return to none of the former states). It is the mistake that was made by Popper in «Poverty of historicism»: by assuming that the history has no aim, he inferred that it has no sense.

We emphasize that social synergetics, looking at the social-historical development through the prism of «whirligig» of order and chaos, allows one to synthesize the ideas of social engineering and cyclicity of social development, which, from the viewpoint of applied meaning of the suggested conception, is one of the most important tasks of authors’ collective.

The state of scientific development of the problem of social-historical development presents the theoretical grounds necessary for the conceptual construction of a new model of historical development in the historical context.

CHAPTER 4

Choice of methodological foundations
for the study

Methodological bases of the new paradigm have to ensure the analysis of social-historical development at the level of specific countries, regions, and civilizations, to adequately interpret important events of the contemporary epoch, and to allow one to foresee principal tendencies and perspective of the historical development.

In the modern sociological science, there occurs an actual global transformation stimulating a change of basic categorial characteristics, which implies a change in representations of the common and the single.

Objectively, the time of a change of the paradigm of social-historical development came. By a paradigm, we mean theoretically and practically important scientific achievement which give a model, statements of problems, and their solution to the scientific community for a certain time[40].

A result of study will depend on the basic choice of a methodological approach. The criterion of objectivity and universality of sociological knowledge requires to study a situation in all regions and countries of the world in view of global tendencies. This allows one to clarify the fact of the termination of one epoch and appearance of the other and possible ways of the transition to it. In this context, the American sociologist I. Wallerstein outlines the aspiration of sociology to become the exact science normative for the sphere of policy[41].

M. Archer comprehends conceptual problems of sociology in the opposite manner. She outlines that social science cannot play the role of radical transformer from the viewpoint of Comte’s programming of the society[42]. On the other hand, a use of the methodology of social engineering is connected with the orientation of scientific tools to mathematical logic[43]. In the context of the present investigation of social-historical development, we assume an applied utilization of appropriate methods in the process of analysis of indices of societal characteristics. After the derivation of empiric indices, they should be undergone to comparative analysis.

A realization of the methodological approach to the study must ensure the possibility of a harmonic transition from the common to the partial (civilization – country) and conversely, with the purpose to determine regular ties between social-historical phenomena and their specificity. In this case, all our positions will be restricted the time and experience we have cognized[44].

On the basis of representations of cyclicity of the social development, the main methodological idea of the project proposes the instrumental possibility, which is adequate to tasks of the study, to reconstruct the objective logic of principal historical changes, which are characterized such events as «revolutions», «transformations», state overturns, diverse social protests, numerous civil conflicts, local and global wars. Similar phenomena, as a rule, appear in the so-called transient states of social development, which can serve hypothetical indicators of epochal changes.

For analysis of these phenomena, we consider the study of A.L.Chi-zhevsky[45] as methodologically acceptable. He demonstrated the interrelation between a historical process in the form of the social-historical activity of the mankind and processes in the Sun, a degree of its astrophysical activity. Having established a direct connection, Chizhevsky proved his hypothesis on the actual historic data starting from 500 BC and till the XIX century. Moreover, he emphasized that non every maximum of solar activity unconditionally stimulates the corresponding maximum of the historical activity. In order that happens, the proper immanent conditions should be available as a necessary requirement (in Chizhevsky’s opinion, these are social-economic and political along with, possibly, spiritual or social-psychological conditions).

An important methodological basis of the present investigation is the idea of cyclic character of the psychical development of the man because a personality is one of the main elements of any social structure. In this context, we distinguish theoretical-practical generalizations made by D.Feldshtein[46], which are substantial for our approach. By basing on the occupational approach (S. Rubinshtein, A. Leont’ev, A. Brushlinsky, et al.) and age periodization of psychological development of a personality in ontogenesis (D. El’konin), which were advanced in psychology, Feldshtein demonstrated a cyclic (periodic) character of changes in the psychological structure of a personality and, respectively, in the psychological structure of activity, in which the communicative and objective plans are alternatively actualized.

The historical origin of leading activities allows one to rationally explain (rather than to simply state) analogies to the psychical development of the mankind and, in addition, sets reasonable limits for such analogies by differentiating a true cause-effect connection and an analogy based only on the general features similar for any process of development of a large system[47].

Every epoch in the psychological development of a personality consists of two periods regularly connected between themselves:

1. The mastering of tasks, motives, norms of human activity and the development of emotional-consumptional sphere;

2. The mastering of means of actions and the formation of operational-technical possibilities. In this case, the transition from one epoch to the next one occurs under the appearance of a discrepancy between operational-technical possibilities and problems and motives of the activity, on whose base they were formed[48].

Social changes can be considered in the context of societal processes, states, and features, which are realized in the frameworks of a unit epochal historical cycle. By societal psychics, we mean the most integral generalizing characteristics of social processes, a distinctive collective dictionary of the historical-cultural heredity of a society[49]. The analysis of societal characteristics is related with the methodological problem of decipherability of the historical-cultural code keeping the solution of properties of the societal psychics, which are objectified in all things encountered by the man in the historical-cultural space[50].

However, the largest methodological problem arising in the process of investigation is identification of the subject of analysis, whose objective societal indices should give exact data for theoretical constructions of periodization of the social-historical process both in retrospect and prospect.

Methodological approaches used upon the elaboration of the basic conception in studying the social-historical development will be mainly conserved during the investigation of a specific applied field for further analysis in the sphere of political, legal, philological, and other sciences of the social and humanitarian profile.

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