The belief in historical destiny is sheer superstition. There can be no prediction of the course of human history by scientific or any other rational methods. –Karl Popper Karl Popper (1902 – 1994) was one of the most famous, and probably the most influential, philosopher of science of the twentieth century. He grew up in the Vienna of Freud, Wittgenstein, the Logical Continue Reading …
Philosophy of History Part XV: What Is Historicism?
Historicism is a somewhat obscure term, but one does occasionally encounter it in philosophy, and especially in discussions about the theory and nature of history, so I thought it might be worthwhile to pause for a moment and discuss it. Historicism is the view, first advanced by Giambattista Vico, and later rediscovered (apparently independently) by German historians, that Continue Reading …