Two-Population Social Cycle Theories

Discerning family resemblances in the world of theories can be useful for several reasons. For one thing, noticing that two theories share the traits of a family of theories may help us to understand each of them better. Secondly, noticing the family resemblances may help us to model them more easily. In particular, the modern software development technique of object-oriented programming leverages family resemblances among different software “objects” to increase the ease of development, and so dovetails very well with the effort to pick out “families” on a more theoretical level. In this paper, we note the large family of two-population social cycle theories, all based on a pattern of disruptions and adjustments akin to the well-known predator-prey model.