The Poverty of Historicism

Brilliant and passionate essay that has had a decisive influence on contemporary social and political theory, "The Misery of Historicism" highlights the internal weakness that afflicts the theoretical structure of this current of thought, which is based on a premise as erroneous in its approach as it is fallacious in its implications: the certainty that human evolution can be predicted by discovering the rites, models, laws or tendencies that would supposedly govern its course. However, as Karl R. Popper argues in this audacious critique, given that human history is crucially influenced by the growth of knowledge, and given also that what we will know tomorrow cannot be anticipated today, the claim to predict the future in this way lacks any scientific basis and belongs to the realm of pure superstition.

Brilliant and passionate essay that has had a decisive influence on contemporary social and political theory, "The Misery of Historicism" highlights the internal weakness that afflicts the theoretical structure of this current of thought, which is based on a premise as erroneous in its approach as it is fallacious in its implications: the certainty that human evolution can be predicted by discovering the rites, models, laws or tendencies that would supposedly govern its course. However, as Karl R. Popper argues in this audacious critique, given that human history is crucially influenced by the growth of knowledge, and given also that what we will know tomorrow cannot be anticipated today, the claim to predict the future in this way lacks any scientific basis and belongs to the realm of pure superstition.