Karl Popper
THE POVERTY OF HISTORICISM

Hebrew edition published by the Shalem Press, Jerusalem 2009

Certainly no writer has attacked more persuasively ideas presupposed by many modern totalitarian ideologies. Dogmas that for years sheltered behind grandiose and forbidding theoretical facades have been brought into the open and exposed to a penetrating analysis and criticism.

-- The Philosophical Quarterly

The Poverty of Historicism, by Karl Popper, is one of the few important books on the methodology of the social sciences to appear in this or any other century;

-- The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

The twentieth century was an arena for bloody battles – reflections of powerful ideological clashes whose echoes still rock our world today. Karl Popper, one of the great luminaries of the philosophy of science, stood at the forefront of the intellectual struggle against fascist and communist political movements, siding with liberal democracy for promoting scientific progress.

The Poverty of Historicism is dedicated to "the memory of the innumerable men, women and children, of all beliefs, peoples and races, who fell victim to the fascist and communist doctrine of immutable laws of historical destiny". Popper was a staunch defender of the spirit of Western civilization, and in this book directed a concerted, uncompromising attack on a single yet fundamental idea, still alive and tragically productive to this day:  historicism – the theory that "laws" or "trends" underlie historical evolution. He strongly opposed the idea that the role of the social sciences was to uncover such laws, thereby enabling mankind to predict its future stages of development.

Sir Karl Raimund Popper was Professor of Logic and  Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. Among his most well-known works are The Open Society and its Enemies and The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

 Ze'ev Levy, who wrote the introduction to the Hebrew translation, is Professor Emeritus of General and Jewish Modern Philosophy at Haifa University. He has published fifteen books in Hebrew and other languages, in Israel and abroad, including Science and Values: On the Cognitive Status of Ethical Value-judgments and Structuralism:Method and Theory.

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