Karl R. Popper, Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences, 10th International Congress of Philosophy at Amsterdam, 1948
בשפת המקור: ”
conspiracy theory of society. It is the view that whatever happens in society— including things which people as a rule dislike, such as war, unemployment, poverty, shortages—are the results of direct design by some powerful individuals or groups. This view is very widespread, although it is, I have no doubt, a somewhat primitive kind of superstition. It is older than historicism (which may even be said to be a derivative of the conspiracy theory); and in its modern form, it is the typical result of the secularization of religious superstitions. The belief in the Homeric gods whose conspiracies were responsible for the vicissitudes of the Trojan War is gone. But the place of the gods on Homer’s Olympus is now taken by the Learned Elders of Zion, or by the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists.”
