ABSTRACT
A main task of this article is to define historicism, which is no easy matter because there have been opposing definitions of it. Some define historicism as the attempt to find the general laws of history (Popper); others define it as the attempt to know historical events and persons in their individuality (Meinecke). I attempt to resolve this dispute by defining historicism in very broad terms as the attempt to historicize the world, to see everything in the cultural and natural world as the product of history. The generalizing and individualizing definitions are seen as two complementary approaches to this general goal.
I also see historicism, unlike most of its exponents, as continuous with a trend in natural science. The attempt to historicize the world was also active in cosmology and biology: It was not the ideology of the social sciences alone. I also define historicism as the attempt to justify the scientific status of history. Here I place the topic in its 19th century context and see historicism as a break with the old paradigms of knowledge of antiquity and the 18th century. Contrary to those recent scholars who see historicism as a continuation of the Enlightenment, I argue that historicism also broke with the Enlightenment in crucial respects, especially in rejecting the natural law tradition and the atomistic conception of society.
