The Great Transition (1964)
The twentieth century might be described as the crucial central period in the third great transition in the state of mankind. The first great transition was from the paleolithic to the neolithic about ten thousand years ago, which was characterized by the invention of agriculture, the domestication of animals, and the development of a settled life in villages. The second great transition, sometimes called the urban revolution, about five thousand years ago, was characterized by the development of political power and the centralization of the food surplus from agriculture in cities. This is the transition from neolithic agriculture to civilizations. What is underway now is a third great transition, in which civilization is passing away and a new order of society altogether, which I have sometimes called post-civilized but which perhaps deserves the name of the Developed Society, is coming into being. The twentieth century is the crucial midstage of this transition which will determine very largely whether it will be made successful or not.
As agriculture was the great invention of the first transition, political power and cities of the second, so science is the great invention of the third transition. ...... As an organized social phenomenon, however, and as an immense acceleration in the rate of acquisition of knowledge, science begins in Europe and if we want to put a date on it, probably the founding of the Royal Society, 1660 in London, would be as good as any,... It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century, however, that the rising volume of scientific knowledge began to effect a major acceleration of technical change. The theory of the steam engine (thermodynamics) was not developed till about 1840, almost a hundred years after the steam engine itself. ... We now face a similar upsurge in the biological industries as a result of the enormous advances in the science of biology. It may well be that in biology we are roughly where we were in nuclear energy about 1900, ...
"Outline: The Meaning of the Twentieth Century," October, 22, 1964 (unpublished). Kenneth E. Boulding Papers, Archives (Box # 39), University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries.
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