Whig history

Whig history is a form of historical narrative that presents the past as a progression toward the present, often treating current institutions and beliefs as history’s inevitable culmination.

Teleology: An explanation that interprets events in terms of ends, purposes, or outcomes toward which they are directed. Whig narratives make later outcomes appear to have directed earlier events.
Herbert Butterfield: A British historian whose 1931 book criticized histories that judged the past by the standards of the present. Butterfield’s critique gave Whig history its influential modern formulation.
Historicism: An approach that interprets ideas and institutions within the historical conditions in which they developed. Historicism resists treating earlier periods as incomplete versions of the present.
Whig history of science: A history of science that presents modern scientific knowledge as the inevitable culmination of earlier discoveries. This influential variant casts past theories chiefly as steps toward accepted science.
Presentism: The interpretation of past people or events through present-day values, concepts, or knowledge. Judging the past by current standards can turn historical difference into a prelude to the present.
The Whig Interpretation of History: Herbert Butterfield’s 1931 book criticizing histories that portray the past as a march toward modern liberty and progress. This book made the label Whig interpretation central to debates about historical method.
Historicism (Popper): Karl Popper’s term for theories claiming to discover laws that predict the necessary course of history. Popper’s critique targets predictive historical laws, a different issue from Butterfield’s critique of Whig narratives.
Scientific progress: The growth or improvement of scientific knowledge, methods, and explanatory power over time. Disputes over scientific progress expose the assumptions behind Whig histories of science.
Historical inevitability: The claim that historical outcomes were unavoidable rather than contingent. Whig accounts often make the eventual victory of present institutions seem unavoidable.
Whigs: A British political grouping associated with parliamentary authority and, later, reform and liberal politics. The historical label draws on Whig political histories that celebrated the rise of liberty.

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