History is background in this book. History provides examples as proof to the social science theories. Quigley helps to understand history, not just have knowledge of history. The focus of the book is the epistemology of science as applied to history. Civilizations are the data which seem to create a pattern. Knowing how the pattern applies to each civilization creates an understanding which can be applied to contemporary civilizations.

There are myriad historical events and each event has a myriad of parts and interactions. Knowledge of history and the writings about history will only be an infinitesimal fraction of all history. Historians will form patterns from selected facts which makes some events more significant while neglecting others. Many explanations of patterns are idealized and oversimplification much like in science. Under observations, scientific laws are approximation to what may be true. Quigley described laws of historic change which also appear close approximations.

No knowledge is complete as new information can contradict priorly established knowledge. Even if a new hypothesis becomes the new established knowledge, it will always remain as a tentative hypothesis even after the most rigorous tests. Each new hypothesis needs to reconcile the new observations with the old with the understanding that each observation cannot be taken in isolation, that the observations influence each other. Knowledge is increased by a series of successive approximations to the truth, but there is no finality in any answer. Science is a method, for as the subjects under observations are constantly changing, the method remains the same. Contrarians to science can be found in Greek philosophers. As Quigley references, the rationalist led to the death of science by vilifying observations, testing hypotheses, and experimentation. Reason and logic were enough for the rationalists as they thought senses serve to confuse.

Historical analysis needs to take account of historical development, historical morphology, and historical evolution. Historical development are the changes in a cultural level. Historical morphology is how one level of culture influences the other levels. Historical evolution looks how historical development and historical morphology react simultaneously to each other.

The best start to understand civilization is what makes up a civilization, the people. Individuals make a collection. Collections make a group. Groups make a society. Society can become a civilization. Groups may not be predictable but they are less liable to change than varied individual behavior. An individual’s personality is largely determined by cultural environment, which is influenced by the individual. Culture needs to be adaptive and persistent in order to survive. Culture has many parts which adapt to each other. When organizations become institutionalized, they lose their ability to adept. Their main concern tailors to survival of vested-interested rather than to achieve social expectations. The struggle between the vested-interested group and the reformers is called the tension of development.


Civilization seem to have a life cycle which are represented by mixture, gestation, expansion, conflict, universal empire, decay, and invasion. Civilizations appear when cultures mix, usually at the peripheries of societies. This mixture produces cultural exchange bringing new ideas and techniques which leads to an expansion in political and economic life. Expansion brings concentration of wealth leading to internal conflicts of social inequality and external conflicts with different nations. A universal empire is created at the end of the period of conflict. Universal empires have many institutionalized organizations causing them be less effective. Less effective organizations such as the army starts to lose to many non-institutionalized invaders.

There were only 24 civilization in ten thousand years. The civilizations under observation are Mesopotamian, Canaanite, Minoan, Classical, and Western. A generalization that can be made about the rise of civilization by the following the steps in order: law and order, commercial increase, cities grow and appear, a middle class appears, and literacy increases. The death of civilization appears in the same steps but in reverse.

The book is well written but it seems that certain passages are out of place. Generalizations about civilizations can be can be found within specific civilization description. As the book is meant to cover civilizations, there is a lack of detail on any particular nation or empire. Transitioning between the variety of aspects in any civilization made it difficult to understand the civilization. The part Quigley makes more significant are the changes that occurred or situations which prevented change. ( )

This is an excellent introduction to the nature of civilizations and the reasons why they rise and fall. by analyzing five major civilizations: the Mesopotamian, Canaanite, Minoan, classical, and Western, he provides a breadth to his theories of development, rise and fall. Having recently been immersed in some of the great works of the classical period I found that this study was a useful adjunct to my reading. ( )

As huge as the name suggests. ( )

Upon researching the Cold War I came across a recommendation to study Quigley's "Tragedy and Hope" as a means for understanding the mechanism that drove the Cold War. As I was researching that book before starting, it seemed that this book would make for a good introduction to Quigley's method of historical analysis.

Having just finished "The Evolution of Civilizations" it does feel like this to be the case. He uses the core concept of how societies are formed on the wave of an "instrument of expansion". From there, that instrument will create growth until it slows and eventually morphs into an instution. At that point the civilization begins to decay before it eventually falls to invasion. He describes this life cycle of a civilization, through seven stages, in depth and I think it is a useful model for examining ones over the course of history. It's all expansion and contraction, mannnn.

At times I was loving his process, especially with specific example subjects like the sport of football and the military structure of a calvary. He cites these in the early chapters and I was hoping for similar imagery throughout. Unfortunately I found much of it to be broad-brushed encapsulations of epochs, fitting ancient civilizations to his model, and attaching them to relatively mundane inventions in this technological age as the plow and Jethro Tull's (the agriculturalist) method of crop rotation. While certainly vital concepts to understand human history, I prefer Jacob Bronowski's imaginative and evocative depiction of innovation in the series "The Ascent of Man."

All that being said, I did enjoy the book a good deal. I'm buying what he's selling in terms of his method of historical analysis and am intrigued enough to want to go on to "Tragedy and Hope" - looking for more specific examples to better understand the 20th century. ( )

Let me repeat a short part from the Conclusion of the book: "To know is not too demanding: it merely requires memory and time. But to understand is quite a different matter: it requires intellectual ability and training, a self-conscious awareness of what one is doing, experience in techniques of analysis and synthesis, and above all, perspective." I'm not a professional historian but I can see that Quigley had put a very honest intellectual effort in order help bring a perspective to the readers who want to understand the history of civilizations. He puts his framework into test by trying to explain the major phases of many civilizations and he seems to have achieved a consistent set of explanations. Moreover, he does this without being dry, the whole book is an exciting read and feels like listening to a good professor who seems to have a deep understanding and knowledge of his subject matter. Nevertheless, there are still many open questions regarding the evolution of civilizations, such as: is it really possible to explain and predict many events by focusing on weapons technology? Why the difference between civilizations between different times, etc?

The book has other drawbacks, especially the explanations about linguistics, but I think they can be tolerated, after all it was written about 50 years ago. We have learned a lot since then but it's a pity that we do not see more people like Quigley; people who can write really good books on big topics without being drown in details, and people who can defend a strong framework for analyzing grand structures throughout long periods of time. ( )