Padrão de Resposta

The idea of foreseeing the economic evolution of peoples according to rigid models of historical determinism has always seduced social scientists. The forecaster is some sort of fortune-teller filled with algebra, and who seeks to satisfy one of the greatest anguish of mankind, the prior knowledge of the future. Besides, the content of his predictions seems, at least to the laymen, scientifically much better based than the mere reading of a deck of cards. Apart from the psychological aspect, there is the issue of aesthetics. The models which foresee the future of mankind according to an unchangeable trajectory, unshakeable by accessory hypotheses, possess an apocalyptical grandiosity, not accessible to those prosaic constructs filled with conditions and variables. It comes as no surprise then that economists have time and again dared to develop these models, which with fewer hypotheses present most predictions.
The use of historical determinism in social sciences encompasses two problems: a philosophical one, which consists of questioning the validity of the thesis, and another one, more practical, of knowing whether we have the right to assert that we have found the laws of this determinism.