Kondratieff Waves in the World System Perspective

Abstract

Academic careers of leading scientists may develop in very different ways. Some get recognition quite fast and easily, some get it towards the end of the life; some die in obscurity but get posthumous fame; some are only remembered a hundred years after their death. However, there is a category of scientists that leave after them a mystery that many others try to solve for many years, decades, or even centuries afterwards. For two thousand years mathematicians tried to prove the Fifth Postulate of Euclid. For three hundred years they were haunted by Fermat's Last Theorem. There are a number of such examples. And the persistence demonstrated by scientists is not coincidental, for the discovery of the mysteries of harmony, be in nature or in the social life is the main goal of science.