POPPER, Karl.

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The Poverty of Historicism. Later edition, inscribed on the title page to his friend, the philosophical broadcaster Bryan Magee, "To Bryan from Karl, July 29, 1970". Three leaves of manuscript notes in Magee's hand are loosely inserted, reflecting his reading of Popper in the years immediately before his seminal 1973 book-length study of the great philosopher.By the late 1960s, Bryan Magee (1930-2019) was established as a political and intellectual broadcaster. His 1970 radio series Conversations with Philosophers featured Popper twice, and his 1973 study was one of the earliest such studies of Popper. There, he highlights the "sense of awe at science and the world it reveals" (p. 30) in the Poverty of Historicism. Two of the three leaves of notes are on paper from London's Savile Club; the last is from Magee's own South Kensington residence: they primarily index key arguments and principles from Poverty. Magee has recorded his "Second reading", covering 25-26 March, 1971, on the title page. The Poverty of Historicism attacks the traditional concept of general laws of historical development: in it Popper argues that the course of history is fundamentally unforeseeable. The work first appeared in three articles in Economica from 1944-45, and was first published in book form in English in 1957.

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