Would you agree with the statement that rapid social change is a comparatively new phenomenon in human history ? Give reasons for your answer.

1. It is generally urged that change is the only unchanging aspect of society. Anyone living in modern society does not need to remain that constant change is among the most permanent characteristics of our present society.

2. It is a fact, the disciple of sociology itself emerged as an effort to make sense of the quick changes that Western European society had experienced between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

3. Though social change appears such a common and obivious fact about modern life, it is - comparatively speaking - a very new and recent fact. It is estimated that human beings have existed on the earth for approximately 5,00,000 (five lakh) years ago but they have been living a civilized life for about 6,000 years.

4. Of these civilized millenniums, it is only in the last 400 years that we have seen constant and rapid change; even within these years of change, the pace has accelerated only during the last 100 years.

5. Because the speed with which change happens has been increasing steadily, it is probably true that in the last hundred years, change has been faster in the last fifty years than in the first fifty. And within the last fifty years, the world may have changed more in the last twenty years than in the first thirty.