ABSTRACT
A kind of history called "speculative" or "universal" history proposes that History itself has a kind of shape or purpose. This chapter argues that speculative history suffers from "patternicity"—what Michael Shermer defined as "finding meaningful patterns in meaningless noise." The dominant metaphors of speculative history are lines, stages, and cycles. In Western Civilization, this became the dominant metaphor of history, with profound implications. Stages are a common metaphor in the supposed patterns of history. Stage theories of history propose large general blocks of historical time, distinguished from other periods. The metaphors of speculative history came under attack in mid-twentieth-century debates about the philosophy of history. Science seeks universal patterns, and speculative history proposes that there are such patterns or metaphorical structures in history. Positivists believe that human activity is caused; idealists believe that it is chosen. The idealist tradition developed primarily in Germany, where Wilhelm Windelband decried that "if action is caused, it's not free.".
