Popper vs macrohistory: What can we say about the long-run future?

Abstract

Can the future be predicted? People have certainly tried since time immemorial with very different aims. Popper famously attacked “historicism”, the approach to social sciences that aims at historical prediction. Sandberg discusses what forms of prediction appear possible and impossible, where the Popperian critique overshoots its goal, as well in what sense macrohistory and long-range futures can be studied in a falsifiable sense.