Thucydides 1.22 shows the historicist tendency in nuce: "This history may not be the most delightful to hear, since there is no mythology in it. But those who want to look into the truth of what was done in the past-which, given the human condition, will recur in the future, either in the same fashion or nearly so-those readers will find this History valuable enough, as this was composed to be a lasting possession and not to be heard for a prize at the moment of a contest."
From Popper's Preface to the second edition:
"I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest
troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is
dangerous-from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows."
Popper thinks that our rational analysis of the world has led us
to take historicist views of our social institutions. We tend to think
that it is reasonable to predict what will happen in the future on a
large scale. Doing so, however, is dangerous, according to Popper. He
also thinks it is wrong, except in cases where large-scale predictions
are self-fulfilling (if everyone believes that it is inevitable that we
go to war, then we will go to war, but not because it was inevitable:
the idea that it was inevitable will have made us go to
war). The danger of predicting large-scale historical change is that
doing so undermines individual responsibility.
"(My book) attempts to show that this (our) civilization has not yet
fully recovered from the shock of its birth-the transition from the
tribal or 'closed society,' with its submission to magical forces, to
the 'open society' which sets free the critical powers of man."
'Tribalism' is a key concept for Popper (it is "the emphasis on
the supreme importance of the tribe without which the individual is
nothing at all" and is found in many historicist theories).
"(My book) tries to clear away some of the obstacles impeding a rational approach to the problems of social reconstruction. It does so by criticizing those social philosophies which are responsible for the widespread prejudice against the possibilities of democratic reform. The most powerful of these philosophies is one which I have called historicism. ... One hears too often the suggestion that some form or other of totalitarianism is inevitable. Many ... ask us whether we are really naive enough to believe that democracy can be permanent; whether we do not see that it is just one of the many forms of government that come and go in the course of history. They argue that democracy, in order to fight totalitarianism, is forced to copy its methods and thus to become totalitarian itself. (THUCYDIDES!) Or they assert that our industrial system cannot continue to flourish without adopting the methods of collectivist planning, and they infer from the inevitability of a collectivist economic system that the adoption of totalitarian forms of social life is also inevitable."
"A careful examination of this question (whether we can expect more than the irresponsible reply of a soothsayer if we ask what the future has in store for humans) has led me to the conviction that such sweeping historical prophecies are entirely beyond the scope of scientific method. The future depends on ourselves, and we do not depend on any historical necessity. There are, however, influential social philosophies which hold the opposite view. They claim that everybody tries to use his brains to predict impending events; that it is certainly legitimate for a strategist to try to foresee the outcome of a battle; and that the boundaries between such a prediction and more sweeping historical prophecies are fluid. They assert that it is the task of science in general to make predictions, and to put them upon a more secure basis; and that it is, in particular, the task of the social sciences to furnish us with long-term historical prophecies. They also believe that they have discovered laws of history which enable them to prophesy the course of historical events. The various social philosophies which raise claims of this kind, I have grouped together under the name historicism."
"only democracy provides an institutional framework that permits reform without violence, and so the use of reason in political matters." I cannot help but ask whether capitalism provides for reform without violence and the use of reason in business matters (which are often political): a problem, however, is that the goal of business is usually some form of monetary profit, which may interfere with what is good overall.
Popper contrasts historicism with the attitude of social engineering: "The social engineer does not ask any questions about historical tendencies or the destiny of man. He believes that man is the master of his own destiny, and that, in accordance with our aims, we can influence or change the history of man just as we have changed the face of the earth. He does not believe that these ends are imposed upon us by our historical background or by the trends of history, but rather that they are chosen, or even created, by ourselves, just as we create new thoughts or new works of art or new houses or new machinery. As opposed to the historicist who believes that intelligent political action is possible only if the future course of history is first determined, the social engineer believed that a scientific basis of politics would be a very different thing; it would consist of the factual information necessary for the construction or alteration of social institutions, in accordance with our wishes and aims. Such a science would have to tell us what steps we must take if we wish, for instance, to avoid depressions, or else to produce depressions, or, if we wish, to make the distribution of wealth more even or less even. In other words, the social engineer conceives as the scientific basis of politics something like a social technology (Plato, as we shall see, compares it with the scientific background of medicine), as opposed to the historicist who understands it as a science of immutable historical tendencies." (Popper contrasts two general types of social engineering: piecemeal social engineering and utopian social engineering)
"Speaking more generally, we can say that the (social) engineer or the (social)technologist approaches institutions rationally as means that serve certain ends, and that as a technologist he judges them wholly according to their appropriateness, efficiency, simplicity, etc. The historicist, on the other hand, would rather attempt to find out the origin and destiny of these institutions in order to assess the 'true role' played by them in the development of history."