Toynbee Arnold Myers Edward (2 results)

Tapa Blanda. Condition: Bien. FOTOS: No dude en pedir mas imagenes. Es de segunda mano, como se ve en la foto, puede preguntar mas detalle del ejemplar.

11 volumes. Rare First Edition of each volume. Illustrated in Volume 11 with 73 maps, folding, double-page and full page, as well as a gazetteer to the ten volume work, an appendix and an index to the maps. 8vo and 4to, publisher's original green cloth, the spines lettered in gilt, Vols. VII - XI in the original printed dustjackets. A fine and handsome set, very well preserved and pleasing, the volumes with dustjackets are in very fine condition. RARE FIRST EDITION OF EACH VOLUME OF THIS MAJOR UNDERTAKING IN HISTORIOGRAPHY. 'A Study of History is a universal history by the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee. Toynbee's goal was to trace the development and decay of 19 or 21 world civilizations in the historical record, applying his model to each of these civilizations, detailing the stages through which they all pass: genesis, growth, time of troubles, universal state, and disintegration. The 19 (or 21) major civilizations, as Toynbee sees them, are: Egyptian, Andean, Sumerian, Babylonic, Hittite, Minoan, Indic, Hindu, Syriac, Hellenic, Western, Orthodox Christian (having two branches: the main or Byzantine body and the Russian branch), Far Eastern (having two branches: the main or Chinese body and the Japanese-Korean branch), Islamic (having two branches which later merged: Arabic and Iranic), Mayan, Mexican and Yucatec. Moreover, there are three "abortive civilizations" (Abortive Far Western Christian, Abortive Far Eastern Christian, Abortive Scandinavian) and five "arrested civilizations" (Polynesian, Eskimo, Nomadic, Ottoman, Spartan), for a total of 27 or 29. The volumes are named as follows: Vol I: Introduction: The Geneses of Civilizations, part one (Oxford University Press, 1934) Vol II: The Geneses of Civilizations, part two (Oxford University Press, 1934) Vol III: The Growths of Civilizations (Oxford University Press, 1934) Vol IV: The Breakdowns of Civilizations (Oxford University Press, 1939) Vol V: The Disintegrations of Civilizations, part one (Oxford University Press, 1 1939) Vol VI: The Disintegrations of Civilizations, part two (Oxford University Press, 1939) Vol VII: Universal States; Universal Churches (Oxford University Press, 1954) [as two volumes in paperback] Vol VIII: Heroic Ages; Contacts between Civilizations in Space (Encounters between Contemporaries) (Oxford University Press, 1954) Vol IX: Contacts between Civilizations in Time (Renaissances); Law and Freedom in History; The Prospects of the Western Civilization (Oxford University Press, 1954) Vol X: The Inspirations of Historians; A Note on Chronology (Oxford University Press, 1954) Vol XI: Historical Atlas and Gazetteer (Oxford University Press, 1959)A 12th volume of Reconsiderations was issued in 1961. Toynbee argues that civilizations are born out of more primitive societies, not as the result of racial or environmental factors, but as a response to challenges, such as hard country, new ground, blows and pressures from other civilizations, and penalization. He argues that for civilizations to be born, the challenge must be a golden mean; that excessive challenge will crush the civilization, and too little challenge will cause it to stagnate. He argues that civilizations continue to grow only when they meet one challenge only to be met by another, in a continuous cycle of "Challenge and Response". He argues that civilizations develop in different ways due to their different environments and different approaches to the challenges they face. He argues that growth is driven by "Creative Minorities": those who find solutions to the challenges, who inspire (rather than compel) others to follow their innovative lead. This is done through the "faculty of mimesis." Creative minorities find solutions to the challenges a civilization faces, while the great mass follow these solutions by imitation, solutions they otherwise would be incapable of discovering on their own. Toynbee does not see the breakdown of civilizations as caused by loss of control over the physical environment, by loss of control over the human environment, or by attacks from outside. Rather, it comes from the deterioration of the "Creative Minority", which eventually ceases to be creative and degenerates into merely a "Dominant Minority". He argues that creative minorities deteriorate due to a worship of their "former self," by which they become prideful and fail adequately to address the next challenge they face. He argues that the ultimate sign a civilization has broken down is when the dominant minority forms a "universal state", which stifles political creativity within the existing social order. The classic example of this is the Roman Empire, though many other imperial regimes are cited as examples. Toynbee argues that as civilizations decay, there is a "schism" within the society. In this environment of discord, people resort to archaism (idealization of the past), futurism (idealization of the future), detachment (removal of oneself from the realities of a decaying world), and transcendence (meeting the challenges of the decaying civilization with new insight. In The Clash of Civilizations (1997) by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington. Huntington viewed human history as broadly the history of civilizations and posited that the world after the end of the Cold War will be a multi-polar one of competing major civilizations divided by "fault lines." In popular culture, Toynbee's theories of historical cycles and civilisational collapse are said to have been a major inspiration for Isaac Asimov's seminal science-fiction novels, the Foundation series.' See Wiki.