The Poverty Of Historicism
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Few works in twentieth-century philosophy have provoked as fierce and enduring a debate as The Poverty of Historicism. Karl Popper mounts a devastating critique against the doctrine of historicism — the belief that history unfolds according to fixed, discoverable laws — targeting the grand theoretical systems of thinkers like Marx and Hegel that claim to predict the inevitable trajectory of human societies. With surgical precision, Popper argues that such theories are not merely wrong but fundamentally unscientific, incapable of falsification and therefore dangerously immune to rational scrutiny. Rooted in Popper's broader philosophy of science and his landmark theory of falsificationism, this work stands as a cornerstone of liberal democratic thought and a decisive intervention in the philosophy of social science. Written with the urgency of a man who had witnessed the catastrophic consequences of totalitarian ideologies first-hand, Popper illustrates how the seductive certainty of historicist thinking paves the road to authoritarianism. For anyone grappling with the limits of human knowledge, the nature of scientific inquiry, or the foundations of an open society, this text remains as vital and unsettling as the day it was first published.
Author: Karl R Popper
Format: Paperback
Genre: Philosophy
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Few works in twentieth-century philosophy have provoked as fierce and enduring a debate as The Poverty of Historicism. Karl Popper mounts a devastating critique against the doctrine of historicism — the belief that history unfolds according to fixed, discoverable laws — targeting the grand theoretical systems of thinkers like Marx and Hegel that claim to predict the inevitable trajectory of human societies. With surgical precision, Popper argues that such theories are not merely wrong but fundamentally unscientific, incapable of falsification and therefore dangerously immune to rational scrutiny. Rooted in Popper's broader philosophy of science and his landmark theory of falsificationism, this work stands as a cornerstone of liberal democratic thought and a decisive intervention in the philosophy of social science. Written with the urgency of a man who had witnessed the catastrophic consequences of totalitarian ideologies first-hand, Popper illustrates how the seductive certainty of historicist thinking paves the road to authoritarianism. For anyone grappling with the limits of human knowledge, the nature of scientific inquiry, or the foundations of an open society, this text remains as vital and unsettling as the day it was first published.