"The fundamental problem ... of the social science, is to find the laws according to which any state of society produces the state which succeeds it and takes its place." J.S.Mill, Logic, VI.x.1-2
A number of elementarily simple forms of society, give rise to a wider and ever-widening diversity of forms of ever-ascending orders of complexity.
All societies pass through one and the same developmental path.
Historical Materialism: the approach Marx advocates for thinking about historical change. A society's way of producing life's necessities determines its other characteristics, including the dominant thinking of the age.
'Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life? ... What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed?' (Marx, The Communist Manifesto)
Marx thinks there is a dynamic at the heart of any system of production: a conflict between people's aspirations towards a better life and the constraints imposed by a particular economic order.
This results in a sequence of revolutions which eventuate in modern Western society (19th century Western society for Marx). A final revolution he predicted would bring in Communism.
Change sometimes depends on the acquisition of new knowledge which necessarily cannot be predicted. (Karl Popper, 1902-1994)
The human being, according to Romantic thought is born relatively unformed but with a potential, a potential that is gradually fulfilled during the course of the individual's life. Hegel's theory of historical change was parallel to this. A culture's history is the gradual fulfillment of a destiny that is there as a potential from its beginnings.
| Prepared
by VP | Revised 16:02:09 |