Benefit of Hindsight: Polybius, Vico, Wilde, and Critical Emergentism

Abstract

This paper is a reading of Oscar Wilde's essay The Rise of Historical Criticism, analyzing Oscar Wilde's conception of critical historiography, with a particular focus on the issues of hindsight bias, on the hermeneutics of retrospection and on Wilde's position within the tradition of emergentist theory and cultural evolutionism.

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Keywords: Wilde, Polybius, Vico, Emergence, Hindsight, Hermeneutics, History, Criticism, Interpretation, Historiography