Historicism
The view that history has a structure, direction or logic of its own, operating independently of the individuals who make it up — so that the course of events can be understood, and to some extent predicted, as the working out of an underlying law. Hegel located that logic in the unfolding of spirit, Comte in the succession of theological, metaphysical and positive stages, Marx in class struggle and the inevitable collapse of capitalism, Spengler in the organic life cycle of civilisations. Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism attacked the whole family as pseudo-science: if the growth of knowledge cannot be predicted, neither can the future of a society that depends on it.