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RC Series Bundle: The Poverty of Historicism (Routledge Classics)

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Do you have a deep down, hard to enunciate, disquiet with the level of debate in the broad area of social theory and "social engineering"? Do you feel that many of the claims and pronouncements made by social theorists (of any political disposition) are unjustified, but do not really know why you feel that way? If so, this book is a useful starting point for an examination of the problem.

In it, Popper develops the argument that "Historicism" (the term has more than one meaning in different contexts) as he defines it is a flawed approach, and that it is not a justifiable base for the sweeping claims of the historicist. To Popper, historicism is the concept that, by examination of history, we are able to define the rules that govern social change and hence are able to predict those changes. His initial impetus to look into this area was a critical evaluation of Marx - see his essay "How I became a philosopher without really trying" published in "All life is problem solving".

In its simplest form, Popper's argument is the observation that observation of the past does not allow one to accurately predict the future. This may seem to be a fairly obvious statement, but it is worth keeping in mind as he develops the various arguments that make up the case for and against historicism.

Popper's philosophy is often overlooked, perhaps because he attempts to limit himself to goals that he can reasonably achieve. He is a very prominent figure in the philosophy of science, and much of his epistemology relates to the methodology of the empirical sciences, and hence to direct observation, and the relationship of observation to development and testing of theories. Perhaps because he is not too ambitious, his philosophy is less "sexy". It is, however, eminently reasonable, and avoids many of the great stumbling blocks of traditional Western philosophy - for example, the problem of induction and infinite regress.

This book is non-technical, and is accessible to those with little formal philosophical training. It addresses the dominant paradigm in social engineering, and suggests why we may be unhappy with that paradigm.

Sir Popper is considered one of the most important thinkers in the area of philosophy of science. "The Poverty of Historicism" despite its complexity, carries a fundamental simple message: prediction over the course of history (its social and economic implications) is nothing more than a fantasy, an illusion. And this assertion is based on the principle that the events/persons responsible for changes are themselves affected by these same changes. It is Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty applied to social sciences!
Historicism is the theory that history develops itself according to pre-determined, inexorable laws with a fixed objective or end. Fascism and communism were laid upon these presuppositions, and the course fo history has proven the fallacy (therefore poverty) of such assumptions. The attempt to have a holistic approach by eliminating individual differences through "brain washing" is incompatible with critical thought, and although it will bring about a concentration of power it will also cause an erosion of knowledge. The Poverty of Historicism becomes a poverty of imagination, of the ability of critical judgement and analysis. Historicism, according to Karl Popper preposterously assumes the postion of having discovered the problem of "change," but revolutions are not unique to our modern era and the metaphysical speculation of what constitutes "change" has been addressed since the time of Heraclitus.
The goal of applying scientific methods with the same accuracy and predictability as those in theoretical physics is bound to end in failure when it concerns the course of history. The influence of the prediction upon the predicted events is here being termed as the "Oedipus effect." Physics can arrive at universally valid uniformities, whereas sociology must be contented with the intuitive understanding of unique events, and of the role they play in particular situations, occuring within particular struggles of interests, tendencies and destinies. If sociological laws determine the degree of anything, they will do so only in very vague terms, and will permit, at the best, a very rough scaling.
Karl Popper who was a fierce advocate of democrary and social critiscim, dedicated this book to all of those who have been victims to the fascist and communist belief in the inexorable laws of historical destiny.

Karl Popper's book is an outstanding critique to what has become known as historicism, the belief that the future of society can be accurately predicted, and that history follows a fixed path towards a specific goal.

This idea is mostly associated with two influential figures. The first is the German philosopher Hegel who produced a philosophy of history based on the tradition of philosophical idealism, and the other is Karl Marx, who, strongly influenced by Hegel, created the concept of the "materialistic conception of history", or as is commonly known today, dialectical materialism. In this concept, Marx laid out the theory that history is pre-determined to move towards its ending point, which is a classless, stateless, propertyless society he described as "communism". Marx believed that he had uncovered the scientific laws of history and thus could predict its development and its end. The main problem arises when such ideas escape the scientific community and are translated into political action. Hence Communism was driven by Marxist historicism, and other oppressive regimes, such as the Nazis, had a touch of racialist historicism in their ideology.

One needs to understand that not all of what Marx and Hegel wrote was plain historicism, and their methods and theories have been adopted in various disciplines, based of course on their relevance. But this notion of a fixed historical road, or the idea that one can clearly predict the major events of the future, is what Karl Popper objects to. In this book, he explains with clear logic, that such ideas are unscientific, and should be included in the trash-can of pseudo science. Popper's argument is strong and to the point, demolishing the scientific and the logical basis that historicist theories claim to have. I strongly recommend this book, for it demolishes a branch of thought that has stayed way to long with us, and has caused, sometimes intentionally, but many times unintentionally, great harm to humanity.

In this book, Karl Popper explains his vision on the course of history, on historical determinism, and on the theories of Descartes, Poincaré and Duhem.

The course of history
For K. Popper, evolution in history is never dominated by theories, although they may exert some influence, at the same time many other less rational or even completely irrational factors are at work.

Historicism (Engels, Marx, Spencer, J.S. Mill, K. Mannheim)
Historicism is that part of social sciences which considers historical predictions as its main objective. It pretends that this goal can be achieved if we discover the 'laws' or 'trends' that underlie historical developments.
Karl Popper rejects this approach for the following reasons: the course of human history depends heavily on the increase of human knowledge. We can not rationally or scientifically predict this increase. So, we can not determine the future course of history. Developing a theoretical history which is the equivalent of theoretical physics, is impossible.

Descartes, Poincaré, Duhem, essentialism
For Descartes, the principles and premises of deductive systems must be certain ('clear and distinct'). For K. Popper, these principles are only provisory, are only hypotheses. Popper does not agree either with Poincaré and Duhem, for which some systems may not be subjected to empirical tests. A world of universals (essentialism) doesn't exist, only a world of real objects (nominalism).

Popper's proposition of piecemeal adjustments (not revolutions) in the social sphere has been heavily criticized. One critic even asked how a HIV plague can be attacked by piecemeal interventions. But, in fact, the HIV plague was attacked in a piecemeal manner; first by individual drugs, then by cocktails.

This defense of indeterminism is a must for all historians and for all Popper fans.

The best introduction to Popper's philosophy is Bryan Magee's `Philosophy and the Real World. An Introduction to Karl Popper'.

1. Historicism is a term that was invented by Karl Popper. He did it on purpose to prevent confusion with any other existing term.
2. The book is about methodology of social science but of course most of the conclusions are about the nature of social science.
3. He seeks to refute the two core arguments that are advanced to show that social science is not like science.
4. The anti naturalist doctrine says social science is not like science because unlike in science we cannot really follow the hypothesis>experiment>conclusion> refinement of hypothesis cycle. Various reasons are offered for this such as being unable to experiment, complexity of social science (includes biology, psychology etc.), novelty (every situation is unique because of the `uncertainty principle') and the fact that social experiments is not worth doing in a piecemeal fashion because their generalisability is very less.
5. The naturalist doctrine on the other hand looks at social science as being similar to astronomy (global laws which explain everything about the universe and cannot be disobeyed or overturned no matter what we do) and says that laws of social science can be found. These laws are not accurate in the short term but work very well in the long term across periods of history and in fact are necessary to be able to make out the transition between different periods of stages of history as the deeper content of each of these stages cannot be known with accuracy. Also these laws can be solely understood by studying the history that is records of past events. These laws are called Holism by Popper and he shows that even in the anti naturalist doctrine holism is popular because it is used as a constant between the various stages of history (which in the short term cannot be analysed and predicted).
6. The holism is central to historicism and leads to a position where in the short term we cannot do anything about social sciences in the manner of being able to rationally change and predict the consequences but in the long term we have to ensure that we are in tune with the tide of history as revealed by laws such which have roots in Plato's republic and the Marx's march of the proletariat etc. The only proactive thing we can do is to hasten the transition of various stages or change our values and beliefs to be in tune(Marx ...reduce the birthing pangs in contrast to his call to action of changing history rather than interpret it).
7. So what will work according to Popper :
a. In terms of experiments he suggests piecemeal engineering that is based on the scientific method. He says that scientific experiments may look on the surface easier to setup and control as compared to social experiments but this is because we are usually comparing a limited scope experiment to one on a large scale. If the scientific experiment was on the large scale as is expected in a social context it would be just as difficult.
b. Also large scale social experiments such as centralised planning are actually not helpful in understating cause and effect because it is very hard to learn from very large failures .Specifically with respect to planning they cannot centralise knowledge and control all kinds of relationships. To get around this they use propaganda and fear which defeats the purpose of seeing whether planning works to better the society as it stood before the start of the "experiment".
c. In a large scale social change recognise that often one can only offer interpretations based on various point of views(e.g. capitalist) and the starting conditions ( equivalent to initial conditions) as opposed try to come up with a set of unchanging laws that this large scale event seems to justify (e.g. Russian Revolution.
d. He rejects the holism argument and march of history as he says that there are no laws of social science that can be gleaned by studying many separate events. There is just a trend and a trend has to be explained by multiple laws. The mistake of historicism is to see trends as laws.
e. So even if these multiple laws were there they would not be that relevant because other than in fields such as theoretical physics ( law of gravity) the laws themselves act as background to solving a practical problem rather than being the cause of the practical problem (e.g. prediction of earthquakes in a place is not going to be found out by applying the law of gravity although any hypothesis must be consistent with gravity).
f. So to solve these practical problems we can take the piecemeal engineering approach by formulating the hypothesis as negative statements ( e.g. progress in science cannot occur in a totalitarian regime). These can then be tested using the experimental approach.
g. We should take a technological view of social science ( build a building to guard against a storm) as opposed to a theoretical view ( explain the occurrence of storms in a location over 30 years).
h. The poverty of historicist is a poverty of imagination as it says that there cannot be a scientific approach to social science but at the same time there are absolute and unchanging laws - called essentialism on the lines of Plato's Republic (that only a few people understand ) which TODAY (this generation, this period in history where the historicist is) are operating far quicker than ever before because of the "pace of progress".

For Popper's fans, this is a great reading. It's a classic, and the philosopher of science makes his point about historicism.
Excellent choice!

Popper's argument here and his general view are somewhat surprisingly in synch with that of American Pragmatic philosophy. Elements of surprise, of creative newness are what for Pragmatists make the human future, history itself as a whole fundamentally unpredictable. Popper argues in this work that total theories such as Marxism which claim to contain within themselves the true course and outcome of history, are by their very nature, mistaken. A total predictability of history is impossible in part because the prediction itself effects the actors, but also because of unseen, and unforeseeable elements which come with our always imperfect knowledge. The position taken here by Popper is in consonance with his own defense of the Open Society, and human freedom- other major elements of his thought.
Popper sees here a fundamental truth of the human situation.