Ibn Khaldun’s science of society

The Muqaddimah tries to find the laws behind the rise and fall of societies. Its key idea is asabiyya, group feeling: the solidarity that lets a hardy people conquer and found a dynasty. Once in power, rulers grow used to luxury, the bond weakens, they turn to hired soldiers and heavier taxes, and within about three generations a more united group replaces them. He also told historians to test reports against what is possible given the nature of society, not only against the reputation of the person who passed them on.

Later readers have called him a founder of sociology, economics and the critical study of history, though some caution against reading modern disciplines back into his work. He had studied the philosophers, yet the Muqaddimah includes a refutation of philosophy, which grants that logic sharpens the mind but denies that speculation can reach beyond the senses or judge matters of faith. The habit worth keeping is to ask what holds a group together and what wears it down, and to check a striking claim against whether it could be so.