APPROACHES TO THE PERIODISATION OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY IN THE FORMATION OF HISTORICAL PREREQUISITES FOR THE THEORY OF POST-INDUSTRIALISM

. The purpose of the article is to analyse the existing research paradigms of the historical stages of socio-economic development of society, which opens the possibility of broadening the theoretical base of the study of post-industrialism as a modern state of social evolution and forecasting its main manifestations in the future. Methodology . The results were obtained thanks to the application of the following methods: systematic analysis – when characterising the main paradigms of periodisation of economic history: linear-staged, cyclical and contamination and their components; logical and historical – when studying the process of development of theoretical approaches to periodisation of economic development; method of classifications – when summarising all existing approaches to periodisation into groups; general and special – when establishing the unity of existing theories of periodisation of economic history. Results . It has been noted that against the background of a large number of approaches to periodisation of socio-economic development of society used in scientific literature, each of them builds a conditional, simplified, schematic philosophical model of socio-economic evolution. Thus, the linear stage paradigm, which exists in the evolutionary-progressive, formative and modernist versions, considers social evolution as a predictable linear development under the influence of mainly internal (endogenous) mechanisms of development. The cyclical paradigm emphasises the uniqueness of spatio-temporal cultures-civilisations. It denies unity, consistency and regularity in the progress of society. It has been shown that these paradigms do not provide a way of constructing a complete picture of the socio-cultural development of humanity. Thus, the practicality of using synergistic models of world history is emphasised. Practical implications. The modern transformational character of the development of the social system creates uncertainty in the field of characteristics of its current stage, which is conventionally defined as post-industrialism, as well as future stages. For a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of the modern transformation process and the definition of its driving forces, it is important to use an adequate research paradigm of the process of social evolution. It is shown that such a paradigm should be considered as a synergistic (contamination) paradigm, combining unitary stage, multivariate, civilisation-discrete and other concepts. Value/originality. On the basis of the systematic analysis of the existing paradigms of periodisation of socio-economic development of society, it was established that the contamination (synergetic) paradigm in the methodology of science, characterised by multi-criteria approaches based on the principles of stadiality, polyvariance and civilisational discreteness, allows to more clearly correlate economic transformations with other spheres of people's life. This paradigm is therefore better suited to identifying key moments in the economic history of humanity and to predicting the stages of its future development.


Introduction
Since ancient times, mankind has been confronted with the problems of developmentits nature, driving forces and mechanisms. Different historical epochs of the progressive movement of civilisation have formed many theories about the social system and the laws of its development. In this connection, the question of identifying certain stages of social progress on the way to the formation of a new, more progressive and just society became relevant. The modern process of transformation of an industrial civilisation into a new, postindustrial one presents scientists with the task of studying its characteristics, which is impossible without understanding the mechanisms of this transformation process and determining its driving forces. In order to identify similar regularities in the functioning of the stage of social development that follows the industrial one, it is important to analyse the theories of scientists who carried out the periodisation of economic history and made predictions about the formation of a new stage of development.
Periodisation is a rational method of organising a mass of empirical and theoretical information into periods of time in order to deepen knowledge and understanding of the changing states of objects in the surrounding world. However, any periodisation is always the result of a person's constructive thinking and reflects his world view and his way of interpreting history as such. It creates the necessary conditions for structuring and systematising historical material, for studying and understanding changes in the natural and social forms of human existence, for creating various models and theories to explain them and, most importantly, for providing a scale for measuring them. At the same time, historical knowledge deals with extremely complex and structured objects -a person, a community, a society, a state, etc. -which are subject to constant changes in their temporal and spatial coordinates and are presented in the study in a subjectively reconstructed form. Therefore, periodisation, carried out according to certain conceptual and categorical criteria, inevitably simplifies and distorts historical reality. It serves cognitive purposes, but it does not absolutize the objectivity of the knowledge obtained with its help, since it is based on the consideration of individual factors and not their entire complex. Therefore, since the functional and cognitive significance of the periodisation of the history of the economy consists in determining the logic of the historical development of the economic systems of society, the characteristics of their key periods, qualitative changes in them, the study of the process of increasing the integrity of the system, the determination of the regularities of periodisation will provide an opportunity to clarify the key characteristics of the post-industrial stage of the development of social systems.

Main Approaches to the Periodisation of Economic History
When analysing the approaches to the periodisation of economic history that exist in the scientific literature, several main ones should be highlighted. For example, I. Koropetsky distinguishes between realistic and conventional approaches. The first is characterised by the definition of certain periods according to socioeconomic criteria, which in turn are based on the study of fundamental changes in the economic system (Koropetsky, 1998). The proponents of the second approach believe that the complexity and duration of these changes do not allow them to be identified with sufficient certainty. This approach developed into the concept of anti-historicism (K. Popper, R. Aron, L. Mises, F. Hayek), according to which there is no single history, nor its laws and successive stages, since society is the sum of individuals. As a result, history in general, and economic history in particular, is free, non-deterministic and unpredictable.
At the same time, from the author's point of view, a deeper and more meaningful approach is to distinguish three historically formed paradigms of analysis of the evolutionary development of mankind: linear-stage (unitarystage), cyclic and contagion as a combination of elements of the first two paradigms.

Linear-stage (Unitary-stage) Paradigm
This paradigm interprets human history as a descent from lower to higher, from simple to complex, from one stage to another, i.e., as a predictable linear development under the influence of mainly internal (endogenous) developmental mechanisms. Within the framework of this paradigm, the following Vol. 4 No. 2, 2023 approaches have been formed: linear-stadial (evolutionary-progressive), informational and modernist (Kozyuk, Rodionova, 2015).
The linear stage approach is united by theories that share a common theoretical and methodological position of the hard core. First, it recognises a social system consisting of individual socio-historical organisms and their systems as the subject of the historical processes of society. Second, it absolutizes development as progressive-evolutionary historical progress in space and time, a linearstaged, stadial, monodetermined, continuous and endless, progressive-irreversible process with social, cultural and economic models that are uniform for all peoples, the dynamics of which are studied in terms of the evolution of the entire system. In these models, economic development is a component of social development, and differences in the development of nations are a consequence of their different stages. Views on the irreversible and progressive movement of economic life are characteristic of ancient thinkers (Democritus, Dykearchus, Epicurus, Hesiod). Thus, Hesiod divided humanity's past into "golden", "silver", "copper", "heroic" and "iron" ages. The real revolution in the perception of time and space is associated with the Judeo-Christian monotheistic tradition, which introduced universal categories of linear time, space and social change based on eschatological and teleological interpretations of human earthly existence. In the works of early and later Christian theologians, a universal theological version of history was developed and approved, with particular emphasis on the category of linear historical time -before and after the birth of Jesus Christ -which is used today.
As part of the universal periodisation of human existence in the European Middle Ages, local periodisations were used -of separate governments, states (kingdoms), outstanding events, etc. Approximately in the Middle Ages, Augustine initiated a religious and philosophical periodisation of historical development based on the Bible as the fulfilment of God's plan (providentialism).
During the European Enlightenment, the idea of progress developed into a rationalist theory, which became the basis for the establishment of a single-stage model of historical development according to the scheme: savagery -barbarism -civilisation ( J. Boden, A. Fergusson). They also include a four-stage periodisation based on the change in forms of economic activity from hunting and animal domestication to agriculture and commercial society ( J.-A. Condorcet, A. Smith, F. Quenet, A.-R. Turgot, J.-Zh. Rousseau); Antiquity -Middle Ages -New Era (K. Keller).
In the 19th century within this approach, a paradigm was formed, the basis of which was the theory of social evolution and the concept of the fundamental role of material production in social life (philosophers K.-A. Saint-Simon, O. Comte, and H. Spencer, cultural experts and economists L.G. Morgan, R. Jones, F. Liszt, F. Tennis). Yes, according to K.-A. Saint-Simon, social systems go through three stages in ascending order: ancient, based on slavery; medieval -feudal state; and industrial, based on industry, planning and centralism in the management of the economy. F. Liszt divided the history of economic development into five stages: savagery, cattle breeding and agriculture, agricultural -manufacturing, agricultural -manufacturing -commercial. Archaeologists X. Thomsen and J. Vorso developed a periodisation of archaeological sites: Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, which is widely used today. L. Morgan, based on the analysis of individual elements of material culture, described such stages of primitive society as savagery (appearance of man, fishing, use of fire, bow and arrow), barbarism (discovery of pottery production, birth of agriculture, discovery of iron). The Russian scientist L. I. Mechnikov divided the history of the national economy into river, Mediterranean and sea periods. The periodisation of P. Maslov is similar: isolated economy; public (municipal) economy; district economy; national economy; world economy.
In the second half of the 19th century, the historical and economic direction of research was established. Representatives of the German school of history proposed various options for periodisation based on the concept of exchange (a method of distribution and exchange of necessities). Their generalisation is as follows: natural self-sufficient economy in primitive, ancient and medieval societies -monetary economy of the manufacturing perioddeveloped credit economy in which the formed national market, true capitalism. Representatives Vol. 4 No. 2, 2023 of the social orientation within the framework of the German school of history expanded the analysis of the development process by combining technical-economic, socioorganisational and socio-psychological factors, while giving priority to non-economic factors. Thus, according to the concept of V. Sombart and M. Weber, the development of the economy was determined by individual, transitional and social economies.
In the 20s-40s of the 20th century, the concept of linear and gradual development of society was developed by representatives of evolutionism and neo-evolutionism (H. V. Child, J. Lindsay, G. Spencer, E. P. Chaney, L. White, J. Steward, etc.). These scientists emphasised the polylinearity (polyvariance) of evolution, as well as the relationship between the development of society and the conditions of the external environment, which served as the basis for the development of various types of techno-ecological systems. Scientists in this direction came to the paradoxical conclusion that the unilinear development of the social system does not deny its multilinear evolution, because there are no significant differences between them. According to neoevolutionary scientists, social evolution has no given direction, periods of progress alternate with periods of involution, and the basic criterion of social evolution is structural change. Scientists of this school considered technical and technological progress to be a decisive factor in the evolution of society. For example, the British archaeologist and anthropologist H. V. Child established the concept of the "Neolithic Revolution" as a transitional period from the stage of the appropriative economy (savagery) to the reproductive economy (barbarism) and the "urban revolution", the content of which is the transition from primitiveness (barbarism) to civilisation. Of fundamental importance was the relationship between the development of society and the conditions of the external environment, the formation of various types of technological and ecological systems.
In the 1950s-1990s, the post-evolutionary theory of industrialism appeared within the concept of linear stages. The post-evolutionary scientists focused their attention on the mechanisms of the transition from the appropriative to the reproductive economy and on the concepts of the industrial society. Thus, K. Polanyi, studying the economic systems of pre-capitalist and capitalist societies, concluded that economic development must be considered in the context of unity with cultural, political and social traditions. He substantiated the statement that in pre-capitalist societies economic relations exist as a component of the socio-cultural system, and the economic process is organised through the mediation of social institutions (family ties, marriage, age, loyalty, patronage, etc.). In the transition to the New Age, the model of the market economy wins when social relations are integrated into the economic system. The scientist notes that the types (models) of distribution of material goods ("forms of integration") are not stages of development of society, as there is no clear sequence between them.
In the 1960s, the theory of industrialism was further developed in the socio-technocratic concepts of the institutionalists (V. Rostow, R. Aron, D. Bell, J. Galbraith, E. Toffler, Z. Brzezynski, etc.). This group of scientists considers technological factors as the main methodological principle of periodisation of society, regardless of forms of property and social relations. They consider world history as an evolution according to the scheme "primitivepre-industrial society -industrial -post-industrial society". In these models, social production is clearly structured and divided into three sectors: primary (agriculture, mining, forestry and fishing), secondary (industry and construction) and tertiary (services). D. Bell later subdivided the tertiary sector into purely tertiary, quaternary and quaternary sectors within the tertiary sector, which develop science-intensive technologies.
V. Rostow's periodisation scheme ("the theory of stages of economic growth") is quite popular within the mentioned concept, which is based on the selection of five stages of economic growth: traditional society (the leading link is agriculture); the stage of preparation for change (industry begins to overtake agriculture); the stage of change (industry becomes the leading link); the industrial stage (the leading link is the production of means of production); the stage of mass consumption (the leading link is the production of durable goods). In the 1970s, V. Rostow added another stage -the "search for quality of life", in which the service sector became the Vol. 4 No. 2, 2023 leading link. O. Toffler, on the basis of his classification of NTP, distinguished the agrarian, industrial and technotronic civilisations. Since, in such a periodisation of social development, capitalism and socialism are only variants of industrial society, this concept was later supplemented by the idea of the convergence of capitalism and communism.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the development of the theory of post-industrial society began, which includes the actual concept of postindustrialism ( J. Galbraith, R. Aron, D. Bell) and its variants: the concept of the information society (M. Castells, K. Kumar, F. Mahlup, Y. Masuda, J. Nesbit, W. Hudson, W. Martin), knowledge societies (P. Drucker, R. Croyford, J. Sapir), smart societies (P. Drucker), etc. A representative of German neo-liberalism, V. Oiken, developed a theory of economic order within the framework of the above concept and, on the basis of the periodisation of the peculiarities of the sphere of circulation and the degree of development of competition, defined two "ideal types of economy": a centrally managed (forced) economy or "exchange economy" and a market economy -an economy in which economic progress is regulated by its subjects. The combination of these two types of economy formed the basis of the "social market economy" model, which combines market mechanisms and state regulation.
The periodisation of formation, developed by the German scientist K. Marx in the 1940s and 1950s, was an attempt to create a universal evolutionary scheme of social development. In this model, social progress was interpreted as a process of emergence, maturation and successive change of stage formations: pre-economic, economic and post-economic. Economic formation was considered in the dialectical unity of Asian, ancient, Germanic and capitalist modes of production, and capitalism was interpreted as the last phase of economic and post-economic or communist formation (Inozemtsev, 1996). In the Soviet period from 1930 to 1980, the periodisation of formation took the form of a five-part system, according to which the successive socio-economic formations of human development were primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and communist. The main formative features were the degree of development of the productive forces or economic base, which determines the superstructure of political, social and spiritual processes; class struggle as the driving force of development; and the development of private property relations, which cause socio-economic inequality and exploitation of man by man.
Modernist and post-modernist paradigms of social development analysis (S. Black, D. Lerner, S. Eisenstadt, S. Huntington), which emerged in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century and are based on the study of the process of transition from traditional agrarian craft to modern society. These concepts are based on the neoclassical theory of modernisation (transitology), which recognises only the market, under the control of the intellectual and political elite, as a mechanism for solving all social problems. The conceptual basis of the modernisation paradigm is that a country can develop under free market conditions and copy "Western" institutions much faster than countries with non-democratic and regulated markets. In fact, this approach is the basis of the processes of so-called globalisation.

Cyclic Paradigm
An alternative to the linear (unitary) paradigm of social development is the cyclic paradigm, which emphasises the uniqueness of spacetime cultures-civilisations and denies the unity, consistency and regularity of social progress. Representatives of this school of thought supported the idea that society moves in a closed circle and regularly returns to its initial state. Every civilisation passes through the stages of birth, growth, prosperity, decline and death, and civilisations exist separately and do not interact with each other. The concepts of civilisationdiscrete historical development do not give a complete picture of the socio-cultural progressive progress of mankind and deny the unity of the world-historical process. Therefore, this paradigm has not gained significant popularity because it is unable to clarify the general tendencies and mechanisms of the progressive progress of society.
The sources of the cyclical model of historical development or the historical cycle are to be found in the history of ancient agricultural societies with an annual cycle of work, in the works of Greco-Roman philosophers (Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Titus Livius), the Chinese historian (Sim Qian), the encyclopaedist Al-Biruni and others. These thinkers, studying the forms and principles Vol. 4 No. 2, 2023 of political power, drew conclusions about political cycles and emphasised the repetition of events in history. Today, the following main models of the cyclic paradigm are represented: world-systemic and plural-cyclical (civilisational), which aim to create a general picture of the evolution of humanity by studying this process in the context of different types of civilisations. The world-system concept is a theoretical trend whose proponents attempted to build a model of the historical evolution of humanity as a single whole, which became the greatest challenge to the unitary and modernist theories of macro-historical change. Its founders, F. Brodel and I. Wallerstein, created a spatio-temporal model of social structure. This model, based on polylinearity and multifactoriality, makes it possible to determine the cycles of growth/ decline of the centres and peripheries of the social system and to study the socio-economic links between its structural elements. The model uses the concept of "mode of production" with three forms of economic integration: reciprocal (reflexive), redistributive and market exchange, which is seen as a kind of staged periodisation based on the principle of separation of the core. Historical systems in this concept exist in two forms: mini-systems (primitive communities with a reciprocal form of distribution and exchange) and world-systems (types of historical coherent systems with a certain structure and boundaries). World systems, in turn, are divided into two types: world empires (political units or civilisations that function on the basis of redistributive relations) and world economies (a system of international relations based on trade). According to the authors of the theory, human history is a history of changes, transformations and the coexistence of different regional world systems.
The plural-cyclical (civilisational) paradigm of learning history is based on the concept of the historical cycle/circulation in the social sciences. It emerged in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries as an alternative to unitary linear models of historical processes. Its theoretical and methodological basis is the consideration of human society as a set of pluralities of autonomous socio-historical societies or their regional systems, whose life cycle includes emergence, functioning and decline. Therefore, according to this model, human history is an infinite multiplicity of cycles, characterised by multi-linear and discrete development in space and time, which is not characterised by unity, sequence and regularity.
This paradigm originated in the ancient civilizations of India and China, developed in ancient times (Plato, the Stoics), in the Middle Ages (Ibn Khaldun), blossomed in the Renaissance (M. Machiavelli, T. Campanella, J. Vico), and finally was formed at the end of the XIX -the beginning of the XX century (concepts of J. A. de Gobineau, H. Rückert, I. Herder, E. Meyer, M. Danylevsky, K. Leontiev, O. Spengler). The concept of "civilisation" is used in these concepts, firstly, as a stage of socio-cultural development according to primordiality (this interpretation was proposed by A. Fergusson). Secondly, as a historically specific state of society (an autonomous socio-cultural system), characterised by a particular way of working, a certain social production technology and a corresponding material and spiritual culture. Thus, the eminent philosophers and historians P.T. de Chardin, A.J. Toynbee and K. Jaspers divided the history of mankind into the primordial or prehistory, which is divided into two periods by the Neolithic Revolution; the history of individual local and regional civilisations; world history, or the modern era of human integration based on the development of industry, science and technology, transport and communication, which begins with the great geographical discoveries and ends with the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. The concept of "axial time" of K. Jaspers was fundamentally new, which substantiates the unity of mankind and the historical process of the world, the source of which is the sociospiritual factor. In the history of society, the scientist distinguishes four periods: prehistory, the period of the great cultures of antiquity, axial time, the era of science and technology (from the 16th century to the present).
S. Huntington proposed his own model of civilisational history (Huntington, 2003). He identified the interaction of civilisations as the main factor in the continuity of world history. The scientist proved the impossibility of a "universal civilisation", singled out conglomerates of local civilisations (civilisation blocks) and emphasised the strengthening of intercivilisational clashes of cultures and religions.
In his opinion, national identity is moving to broader levels -it is being transformed into civilisational identity, a deeper awareness of civilisational differences and the need to protect them.
Ukrainian economists and theorists A. Chuhno, A. Filipenko, A. Galchynskyi, I. Lukinov, Yu. Pavlenko supplemented the civilisational paradigm with the idea that local civilisations of individual countries and peoples characterise the horizontal aspect of civilisational development. The vertical element, on the other hand, reflects the progressive movement of society from one stage of maturity to another. A. Filipenko, using the theory of historical cycles of B. Kuzyk and Yu. Yakovets, proposes to identify relatively independent paradigms of civilisation in modern knowledge of civilisation: general historical, philosophical and anthropological, socio-cultural, technological and economic (Filipenko, 2007).

Contagion (Synergistic) Paradigm
In the second half of the 20th century -at the beginning of the 21st century, the understanding was established that only a constructive combination of unitary, multivariate and civilisational-discrete concepts will allow the creation of a coherent theory of the historical movement of society and the formation of the modern global macro-civilisational system. Modern scientists refuse to understand the development of the economy as the basic driving force of world history, and reject attempts to periodise it according to a single criterion. Given the stable interdependence between the economic, political, social, ecological and sociocultural spheres of public life, it is advisable to consider the development of the economy on the basis of a systemic and synergetic approach.
Thus, critics of the concept of the historical development of civilizations emphasize its inconsistency, the lack of clear criteria for distinguishing civilizations and their number, as well as the denial of the globalization perspective of the development of society, which does not provide an opportunity to build a holistic picture of the socio-cultural development of mankind. Accordingly, they propose contamination (compromise-universal, synergistic) models of world history based on the synthesis of theories of local civilisations with other approaches.
M. Weber, for example, attempted to synthesise the cyclical and linear models of history. Continuing the traditions of German thinkers, he divided the historical process into three components: civilisational (which is evolutionarylinear-stadial), social and cultural, which are characterised by ethnic-civilisational discreteness, the absence of a causal link with technological development (Pavlenko, 2002).
Another variant of the synergetic approach is the theory of world and local civilisations, which combines linear stage and local civilisation approaches to explain the "universal social cycle" and create a universal history of humanity. It traces the idea of the indivisible integrity of world and local civilisations, as well as the tendency of local civilisations, which reveal the structure of world civilisation, to universalise. In the theory of historical cycles, civilisation as an objective reality of the process of progressive development of mankind in the vertical-diachronic plane is revealed through historical cycles: three global supercycles (8th millennium BC -mid-1st millennium AD, VI-XX centuries, XXI-XXIII centuries -the formation of an integral civilisation). It contains seven world civilisations (Neolithic, Early Classical, Ancient, Medieval, Early Industrial, Industrial and Post-industrial), which allow us to trace the turns of the spiral of historical progress and its rhythm. In the horizontalsynchronous dimension, each civilisation is characterised by its own historical rhythm and geographical epicentre of historical progress. The movement from one turn of the spiral to another takes place through a period of transition, the content of which is the crisis of the old system and the social chaos of the new one.
The views of the English historian and sociologist A. Toynbee are regarded by scientists as a combination of the plural-cyclic spatiotemporal and unitary-stage models of development. Toynbee developed the concept of the staged development of civilisations as unique, self-sufficient socio-cultural systems with their own spatial and temporal coordinates. At the same time, A. Toynbee emphasised that the socio-economic history of mankind should be considered as a holistic process in the unity of the principles of civilisation, stages and polylines, since civilisations interact with each other. The researcher believed that civilisation, not nation- Vol. 4 No. 2, 2023 states, is an autonomous system of historical movement. The main characteristic of civilisation is religion; the main driving force is the elite of society, outstanding individuals whose lives are a manifestation of God's will. The driving force behind the development of civilisations is the "creative minority", the bearer of the "life impulse" which, in response to various historical challenges, drags along the "inert majority". The specificity of these "challenges" and "responses" determines the specificity of each civilisation, the hierarchy of its social values and the philosophical concept of the "content of life". However, unable to solve yet another sociohistorical problem, the creative elite turns into a ruling minority that imposes its power by force, not by authority. The alienated mass of the population becomes the "internal proletariat" which, together with the barbarian periphery or the external proletariat, finally destroys this civilisation, if it does not perish first through military defeat or natural disasters.
Periodisation based on the principles of contamination, summarising the latest global and domestic research on the socio-cultural development of mankind and its economic subsystem, was proposed by Yu. Pavlenko. The theory of the process of civilisation developed by him is based on the principles of synergy, which combines stadiality, polyvariance, cyclicity and civilisational discreteness, taking into account cosmohistoricism, personalism in history and globalisation in the aspect of their unity according to the principle of addition. The periodisation of world history according to Yu. Pavlenko includes the prehistory of civilisation (early primitive appropriating society) and the process of civilisation with two main stages: the formation of the foundations of civilisation in the period of the Neolithic revolution and the late primitive society with a reproducing reciprocal economy and the actual history of civilisation. This period includes pre-industrial societies with a redistributive economic system (early local early-class civilisations, "axial time", traditional regional state-class civilisations) and industrial societies -a worldwide macro-civilisation system with a market-industrial economy. Taking into account the growth of the gradual dominance of the information sphere, the scientist singles out the third stage -the information, globalisation stage. Yu. Pavlenko uses the concept of synergetics to describe the self-organising mechanism of social systems through the interaction of order, determinism and unstable equilibrium with disintegration, chaos, spontaneity, randomness and crisis, culminating in a bifurcation point with potentially multivariate development vectors and the realisation of a qualitatively new level of the new order.

Conclusions
To sum up, it can be said that philosophical models of world-historical and, in this context, economic development are conventional, simplistic and schematic. Existing models of social evolution undoubtedly have scientific value, but at the same time they require a systematic review of traditional ideas and their updating on the basis of modern knowledge. The basis of modern concepts of periodisation is the awareness of the integrity of the process of world-historical development as a sociocultural process, which is considered as a system, the components of which are economic, social, cultural, political, informational and other spheres of human activity and their interrelated qualitative transformation. Accordingly, the socio-economic development of society is a multifactorial socio-cultural, historical and economic process that should be studied on the basis of a system-synergistic concept. Under the conditions of the dominance of the synergetic paradigm in the methodology of science, multicriteria approaches based on the principles of stadiality, polyvariance, civilisational discreteness, the correlation between economic transformations and other spheres of people's life, and the determination of key moments in history are constructive.
The modern transformational character of the development of the socio-economic system creates uncertainty in the field of characteristics of its current and future stages. The use of an adequate research paradigm of the process of development of the socio-economic system opens opportunities for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of the modern transformation process and its driving forces, and creates a basis for predicting the patterns of social development in the future.