Speculative Philosophy of History

Several sciences have been created to study the reality of the past; one is traditional history, which, assuming acceptance as a science, is a personal and partial science; however, many philosophers of science also doubt that it is scientific. The second is scientific histories, including social history, which, although their propositions have distanced themselves from purely individual propositions, they are far away from the formation of generalizable propositions that are necessary for the human knowledge to be regarded as science. Third, the various theoretical philosophies of history — whose propositions are quite generalized and all-encompassing — claim that universal laws can be discovered among past phenomena. The theoretical philosophy of history, in addition to believing in the existence of law among past phenomena, also believes in the power of predicting future events. The last case is historical sociology, which has been formed in opposition to traditional history and theoretical philosophies of history, and claims a systematic relationship between past phenomena but it has little inclination towards futurism; regardless, some historical sociologists have put future studies into their work agenda.