The Enumeration of Civilizations

In view of the remarkable popularity, during the past century, of scholarly books and academic courses on civilization, it is surprising how few (as I term practitioners of the comparative study of civilization) have troubled to give an explicit enumeration of the civilizations which they describe and compare. Biologists are rarely so negligent. When, for example, comparative anatomists or physiologists wish to contrast vertebrate or insect taxa with one another, they usually begin by stating that vertebrate classes number five to ten or insect orders twenty to thirty and only then go on to list the diagnostic traits of each taxon. Fortunately, however, a minority of historiologists have been arithmetically more precise than the majority of their colleagues and have prefaced their cultural comparisons with a nose count of civilizations. These conscientious enumerators are, in chronological order

Combinatorics · Enumeration · Epistemology · Genealogy · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · History · Mathematics · Philosophy · World Systems and Global Transformations

• On civilized plurality

  Open Access•Mert Bilgin•Futures•2006

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