More about Arnold J. Toynbee →
Drawing on a sweeping survey of human history, Toynbee identifies certain stable features of human nature alongside a pattern of accelerating transformation—from the long millennia of the Palaeolithic through to the compressed upheavals of the modern age—arguing that this acceleration has made inherited political structures not just outdated but existentially dangerous in the atomic era.
The book is structured around a progression from diagnosis to prescription. Toynbee explores divisive and unifying movements across history, weighing the pros and cons of humanity’s fractured political structure and tracing how divisive feelings—nationalism, tribalism, and ideological rivalry—have intensified even as technology and economics have made the world increasingly interdependent. He examines historical attempts at building world-states, from the Roman and Chinese empires to the Ottoman, and asks whether a genuinely global political order is now both necessary and feasible.
Toynbee’s central argument is that negative habits, above all the habit of political fragmentation and mutual hostility between states, can and must be changed if humanity is to survive the unprecedented challenges it faces. He advocates for a conscious move toward greater political unity, grounded not merely in institutional reform but in a deeper transformation of outlook. The book is at once a work of historical analysis and an urgent case for overcoming entrenched patterns of division before they prove fatal on a global scale.
• Title: Change and Habit
• Author: Arnold J. Toynbee
• Type: Book
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication time: 1966
• Publication place: Oxford, England
Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort
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