A Karl Popper Note

Popper, Karl Raimund, Sir [1902- ]

 1945 _THE POVERTY OF HISTORICISM_. Economica, N.S. 12 (46).

    1954 Tr. Milano.
    1956 Tr. Paris.
    1957 Revised edition. Boston: Beacon Press.

    "In memory of the countless men and women of all creeds or
    nations or races who fell victims to the fascist and
    communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Desti-
    ny." (p. v)

    "The fundamental thesis of this book--that the belief in
    historical destiny is sheer superstition, and that there
    can be no prediction of the course of human history by
    scientific or any other rational means--goes back to the
    winter of 1919-20." (p. vii)

    Holistic thought belongs to "a pre-scientific stage." (p.
    76)

    Whole: "(a) the totality of all the properties or aspects
    of a thing, and especially of all the relations holding
    between its constituent parts, and (b) certain special
    properties or aspects of the thing in question, namely
    those which make it appear an organized structure rather
    than a 'mere heap'." (p. 76)

    A whole in sense (a) is impossible to deal with. (p. 77)

    A craving for "concrete knowledge of 'reality itself'" or
    of the "whole" is "mysticism". (p. 78)

    "The evolution of life on earth, or of human society, is a
    unique historical process." (p. 108)

    The course of a unique process cannot be predicted from
    its past; the butterfly cannot be anticipated from obser-
    vation of a caterpillar. (p. 109)

    A 'static' social system corresonds to a stationary dynam-
    ic physical system; astronomy succeeds because the solar
    system is static. (pp. 112-113)

    The "central mistake of historicism" is its devotion to
    absolute trends, independent of initial conditions. From
    them flow "unconditional prophecies, as opposed to condi-
    tional scientific predictions." (p. 128)

    The premises of deductive systems are "tentative conjec-
    tures, or hypotheses." (p. 131)

    "historical sciences take all kinds of universal laws for
    granted and are mainly interested in finding and testing
    singular statements." (p. 144)