by postodave » November 10th, 2004, 2:29 pm
I was just wondering if anyone else had noticed the similarities between Lewis's criticism of historicism and the late Sir. Karl Popper's. Popper's is to be found in 'The Poverty of Historicism' and also in volume 2 of 'The Open Society and its Enemies'. Popper like Lewis was a critic of logical positivism, indeed he was known by them as 'the official opposition' He argues that scientific prediction of the future, as in Marxism is impossible because the future depends on things which have not yet been discovered; hence it is open, and society needas to be open, to allow it to unfold. Lewis focuses more on the mythical aspects of historicism, but it surely can't be a coincidence that they both use the word in the same way. Could Lewis have read Popper?