In The Poverty of Historicism (1944), Karl Popper argued against “historicism,” which is a term that he popularized for an influential system of arguments among the social scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries—(at least the spirit of) historicism is still influential in the 21st century, which is why I’m motivated to write about it, but Popper himself lived from 1902 to 1994 and in writing about historicism he was pushing back against an influential way of thinking among his 20th-century contemporaries that came from Hegel, Comte, Marx, Spengler, etc.

In explaining one of the aspects of historicism, Popper brought up an insight that I’ve long considered to be of great importance: that when met with a generalization about, say, men or women, whites or blacks, most people interpret the generalization not scientifically, but socially or politically. That is, most people interpret generalizations in the social sciences not descriptively, but prescriptively: not as scientific propositions, but as rightist or conservative social or political moves. For example, if you make the dangerous argument that the most brilliant, ambitious philosophers and scientists have always been and will always be men, that no woman can match what the best men do in that regard, then most people will interpret you not as arguing for a scientific proposition that’s either true or false, but as making a social-political rightist-conservative move that’s either good or bad. “You obviously want to keep women in their place,” the typical leftist-liberal modern pushback goes against what’s interpreted as your reactionary move against the threat of female power. “Being a misogynist, you obviously don’t want to let women get to the top.”