Predictability and the Growth of Knowledge

Synthese 141 (3):445-459 (2004)
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Abstract

In The Poverty of Historicism, Popper claimed that because the growth of human knowledge cannot be predicted, the future course of human history is not foreseeable. For this reason, historicist theories like Marxism are unscientific or untrue. The aims of this article are: first, to reconstruct Poppers argument, second, to defend it against some critics, and third, to show that it is itself based a weak form of historicism.

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References found in this work

A realist theory of science.Roy Bhaskar - 1975 - New York: Routledge.
After Virtue.A. MacIntyre - 1981 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 46 (1):169-171.
The poverty of historicism.Karl Raimund Popper - 1957 - London,: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
A Realist Theory of Science.Roy Bhaskar - 1976 - Mind 85 (340):627-630.
The Idea of a Social Science.Peter Winch - 1959 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 14 (2):247-248.

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