ABSTRACT
The second major form of historicism – which I have called positive historicism – is of more modern origin than its metaphysical relation. Positive historicism, which is a child of the scientific revolution, was born in France during the late eighteenth century, nurtured in Britain and Germany during the next century, and has given birth to offspring of its own during the early twentieth century in both Britain and North America. While the philosophy of positivism has been influential throughout the humanities and social sciences, it took root most deeply, if not permanently, in political economy and economic history. Those intellectuals most closely associated with positive historicism are Saint-Simon, Comte, J.S. Mill, Henry Buckle, the German and British historical economists such as Schmoller, Cliffe Leslie, Ingram, Arnold Toynbee (the uncle of the metaphysical A.J. Toynbee), Ashley, American institutionalists such as Veblen and Mitchell, and, more recently, W.W. Rostow.
