Earlier historians had taken descriptions of widespread social disaster and scattered references to the millennium as signs that the peoples of Europe were expecting Armageddon, but the actual evidence is scant. In the years leading up to AD 1000, the population was spread thin, literacy was rare, centers of information were isolated, and communications technology consisted of messengers on foot, horseback, or muleback, delivering news by letter and word of mouth. If there was no big upheaval in anticipation of the End of Days, it is not surprising. But in the past decade, Kaye notes, some historians have begun to believe once again in the importance of the second millennium. Kaye offers intriguing comments on both his discipline's view of the future and the future of his discipline.
Systems theory is humanity's latest attempt to create a kind of unified field theory of knowledge.
It requires the scholar to build up a subject out of perceptions drawn from a broad set of separate but related disciplines. 15th-18th Century . Braudel's work is truly catholic in scope, offering detailed accounts of the period's demographic features, urbanization, transportation, technology, food, clothing, housing, economics, class relations, and state power. As systems theory continues to develop, it may help future historians consider matters in broader, richer, and less static contexts. This would be a positive direction for the discipline.