This view is problematic for reasons that I attempt to clarify below. Indeed, the bulk of my essay is organized around the opposite presumption: that two societies with the same fundamentals can evolve along very different lines — going forward — depending on past expectations, aspirations or actual history.
Now, after a point, the distinction between evolution and parameter is a semantic one. By throwing enough state variables (“parameters”) into the mix, one might argue that there is no difference at all between the two approaches. Formally, that would be correct, but then “parameters” would have to be interpreted broadly enough so as to be of little explanatory value. Ahistorical convergence and historically conditioned divergence express two fundamentally different world views, and there is little that semantic jugglery can do to bring them together.