FIRST WORLD CONFERENCE ON THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE

The Demographic Revolution and Science

SP Kapitza

PL Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems

MV Keldysh Institute for Applied Mathematics

ABSTRACT

Of all global problems, the inexorable growth of the world’s population is the thorniest. The summation of economic, social and cultural activities during human history is succinctly described by demographic data. By applying the concepts of systems dynamics and synergetics it is possible to develop a mathematical model for a phenomenological description of the global demographic process and project its trends into the future.

Assuming self-similarity as the dynamic principle of development, growth can be described over almost the whole of human history, in which the growth rate at any one time in proportional to the square of the number of people. This relation is due to the collective interaction responsible for the increase in the numbers of people and the informational nature of development. It can be estimated that about 100 billion people have lived since the beginning of human development 4-5 million years ago. Furthermore, large-scale cycles, defined by history and anthropology, have followed an exponential pattern of growth, culminating in the present demographic transition.
The hoped for demographic revolution – the transition to a stabilized world population of about 10-12 billion in the foreseeable future – will be determined by the inherent systemic growth pattern characteristic of an open system, rather than by a lack of resources. The demographic revolution will constitute a fundamental change in the development paradigm of humanity and will be accompanied by population aging. Such a development has never occurred previously in human history. The development of a quantitative nonlinear theory of the world population development has repercussions in the fields of history sociology, anthropology demography, population genetics, epidemiology, and human evolution and origins. The transition to a stabilized world population will have major implications for long-term economic development, and global security priorities.