The Poverty of Historicism.

London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957 8vo. In the original full cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Library stamps to front free end-paper, half title and title page. Miscolouring to spine. Internally fine and clean. XIV, 166 pp. First printing of one of Popper's most influential works: "The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies, his most impassioned and brilliant social works, are as a consequence a powerful defence of democratic liberalism as a social and political philosophy, and a devastating critique of the principal philosophical presuppositions underpinning all forms of totalitarianism" (SEP)Popper argues, it is logically demonstrable by a consideration of the implications of the fact that no scientific predictor, human or otherwise, can possibly predict, by scientific methods, its own future results. From this it follows, he holds, that 'no society can predict, scientifically, its own future states of knowledge'(The present work, P vii).