Historicism
Historicism
The view that the history of anything is a sufficient explanation of it, that the values of anything can be accounted for through the discovery of its origins, that the nature of anything is entirely comprehended in its development, as for example, that the properties of the oak tree are entirely accounted for by an exhaustive description of its development from the acorn. The doctrine which discounts the fallaciousness of the historical fallacy. Applied by some critics to the philosophy of Hegel and Karl Marx. — J.K.F.