Social Science Files
The science of society, the evolution of society, and the governance of society.
Who am I?
Dr Michael G. Heller is a former academic, now free and independent scholar, who has lived and worked in 7 diverse societies. His home bases are Australia and the UK.
He wrote a book which was the first to explain how institutional impersonality fosters long run economic and political development, and why conditions of disequilibrium regularly offer short run chances for institutional advance — Capitalism, Institutions, and Economic Development is published by Routledge.
On Substack he analyses societies historically and comparatively, combining the academic disciplines of sociology, economics, politics, anthropology, archeology, law, and psychology.
He is writing a radically revisionist History of Society.
What is my project?
My long run objective is a comprehensive typological classification of all societies from the beginning of human time through to European seventeenth and eighteenth century modernities. It is an account of human advancements in governance before the emergence of capitalism. Many draft hypotheses can be found in The Archive.
Social Science Files launched in 2022 to exhibit my research for a New Theory of the Evolution of Society.
Now, Social Science Files explains my perspective on the sequence of preconditions and motivations that produced and maintained societies as workable unities over the course of history.
In mid-2025 Social Science Files has over 13,000 Substack Followers.
The 2,400 direct Email Subscribers to Social Science Files include 300+ top scholars.
How has it evolved?
It began in 2017 as a study of seventeenth century English governance, but expanded!
‘The new 2023 Social Science Files Project’ March 14, 2023
‘Social Science Proposal’ April 19, 2023
‘Social Science of Prehistory: a new approach’ September 14, 2024
‘Roadmap: Ten types of society, updated, annotated’ September 16, 2024
‘Type 6 Externalised centre over periphery’ discarded March 16, 2025
‘Around the World in Eight Societies’ updated July 14, 2025
What next 2025-2027?
In March 2025 I commenced a focused chronological tableau of the emergence of society and the forms it took during 200,000 years of evolution. I examine it here piece-by-piece and innovation-by-innovation in a collection of micropublications.
Tableau No. 2/Composition No. VII by Piet Mondrian, 1913
PREVIOUSLY ON FRONT PAGE:
the ‘PLOP’ section
the ‘LIGHT’ section
‘The Heller Files’, quality tools for Social Science since 2022.
Social Science Files displays multidisciplinary writings on a variety of topics relating to evolutions of social order from earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.
SOCIAL SCIENCE FILES remains free, but if you find this work valuable I encourage you to become a paid subscriber. Help to support this ongoing publication.
You can contact Michael by replying to the emails, or write to HellerFiles@gmail.com
