One way to explain the complexity and unpredictability of historical systems, despite their ultimate determinacy, is to note that long chains of causation may separate final effects from ultimate causes lying outside the domain of that field of science.

A blueprint for disaster in any society is when the elite are capable of insulating themselves.

In fact, everywhere in the world there has been a flux between big and small societies. Big political units are constantly being formed, later to fragment. The individual pieces try to pull apart, and then they join together again. One sees that in Europe: There have been unifications and then dissolutions and reunifications. So in the long run, it's 10,000 steps toward amalgamation offsetting 9,999 steps toward falling apart again. In businesses and industries, I would guess that's also true.

The King's 28 letters have been described by scholars as the world's best alphabet and the most scientific system of writing.

Federal elections happen every two years in this country. Presidential elections every four years. And four years just isn't long enough to dismantle all the environmental laws we've got in this country.

Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases.

Eurasia ended up with the most domesticated animal species in part because it's the world's largest land mass and offered the most wild species to begin with.