E. Karl Popper’s criticisms
1. How scientific historicism can be depends upon the stringency of requirements for scientific knowledge. Although the historicist position falls short of the criteria for an exact science, the position does make use of many scientific techniques that establish an inexact science, in my judgment.
2. Piecemeal social engineering may be more respectable scientifically than historicism according to the traditional criteria; but its adequacy in social science is questionable. Piecemeal social engineering ignores even more factors than descriptions of “social wholes.”
3. Popper’s preferences notwithstanding, people (including politicians and social scientists) formulate generalizations about social wholes. How you formulate these generalizations not whether you should do so is the real question. And Popper’s insistence upon piecemeal social engineering merely hinders the adequacy of the formulations by excluding the use of eligible scientific methods.
4. Popper’s own advocacy of piecemeal social engineering is based upon minimal generalizations about social wholes – e.g. we cannot understand them or generalizations about them are not testable. I am not convinced that these generalizations are correct.
5. Since decisions about holistic social development are unavoidable and Popper asserts that scientific methods cannot guide these decisions, his position leads to decisions and subsequent development based upon prejudice or unreliable methods—unless he wants to argue that these decisions cannot control social development.
6. There are numerous scientific tests of historicist’s positions, including Marxism, which are available. If these tests prove to be less conclusive than tests in physics or if results of tests do not convince a particular historicist, we cannot thereby conclude that historicist’s positions are untestable.
