Karl R. Popper.
The Poverty of Historicism.
RKP. 1957
The Poverty of Historicism is a devastating criticism of the belief in laws of history,
or laws of social development, or laws of progress.
But besides exposing pernicious and influential doctrines,
and the dangerous ideologies erected on them,
the book also contains a systematic account of what
the character and methods of the social sciences ought to be,
and an indication of the kind of piecemeal political planning which these methods suggest.
Topics dealt with include: the distinction between predictions and prophecies;
the idea of trends; historical explanation; rationality and the ‘zero method’;
and the role of institutions, planned or unplanned.
In the words of Isaiah Berlin, quoted from his book Historical Inevitability:
‘No one has demonstrated this with greater or more devastating lucidity than Professor Karl Popper.
He has in his Poverty of Hitstoricism exposed “historicism” with such force and precision,
and made so clear its incompatibility with any kind of scientific empiricism,
that there is no further excuse for confounding these two.’
