{"pk":38161,"title":"A Historical Conspiracy: Competition, Opportunity, and the Emergence of Direction in History","subtitle":null,"abstract":"I describe historical patterns that I believe would emerge in any system characterized by living things competing for locally scarce resources. I then consider the search for patterns and their explanation in the context of an intellectual climate dominated by anti-adaptationist rhetoric and doubts about the validity of scientific approaches to history. Notwithstanding this hostile environment, I present a summary of the economic principles that in my view not only account for historical patterns but also serve to predict future trends and postdict past ones not yet known. A positive feedback between consumers and resources – a historical conspiracy of sorts – implies the existence of inherent directions in the history of living things, including humans.","language":"en","license":null,"keywords":[{"word":"History"}],"section":"Article","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6gh17580","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Geerat","middle_name":"J","last_name":"Vermeij","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, Davis","department":"None"}],"date_submitted":"2011-03-20T00:00:00-07:00","date_accepted":"2011-03-20T00:00:00-07:00","date_published":"2011-03-31T00:00:00-07:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cliodynamics/article/38161/galley/28726/download/"}]}