Elaboration of the most frequently found patterns of social change seen in society: It is seen that social change follows certain patterns. The widely recognized patterns are as follows:
1. Linear change: This type of change shows a straight-line progression from one stage to another in a linear fashion.
Diagram - Steady growth from few houses to city (on the basis of numbers)
Society gradually moves to an even higher state of civilization in the direction of improvement; thus it advances in a linear fashion. Also what will be invented tomorrow is not only based on what exists today but on the origins of the past inventions. The growth of development in communication such as telephone has followed a linear pattern. It has grown from land-line to cordless telephones and has reached the stage of mobile phones.
2. Cyclical change: Rapid change on a closer look turns out to be a repeating set of activities that form a cyclical pattern like rhythms of nature, cycle of night and day, seasons sowing-reaping-harvesting. Similarly, society has a predetermined life cycle. After going through all the stages it returns to the original stage and the cycle begins anew.
3. Fluctuating Change etc.: When the order of change turns to the opposite direction after leading towards progress, it is called fluctuating change. In other words, the tendency of change in this phase is not consistent but seems to go up and down depending upon favourable or unfavourable circumstances, as is seen in the case of agriculture. Advancement in the field of agriculture gets retarded if there is insufficient monsoon in one season and increases if there are normal monsoons in the next season.
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