ABSTRACT
Life is just one damned thing after another, whether it is private or public life (British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) in his article ‘You Can Pack Up Your Troubles’ in the US monthly magazine Woman’s Home Companion, April 1952, p. 4). Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things pass and nothing stays, and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river (The Greek philosopher Plato in: Cratylus 402a = A6, as quoted in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed May 23, 2021). The understanding of human societies, it seems to me, requires testable theoretical models which can help to determine and to explain the structure and direction of long-term social processes [Norbert Elias, ‘The Retreat of Sociologists into the Present,’ in: Goudsblom & Mennell (eds.) (1998), p. 178]. I remember looking down from the crest of the highest Cordillera; the mind, undisturbed by minute details, was filled by the stupendous dimensions of the surrounding masses (Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary Edited by R.D. Keynes , (2001), p. 444).
