 This dream was given impetus, he suggests, by the emergence of a genuine predictive capability regarding solar and lunar eclipses at an early stage in human civilisation, which became refined with the development of the natural sciences. Historicism derives a superficial plausibility from the suggestion that, just as the application of the laws of the natural sciences can lead to the prediction of such events as eclipses, knowledge of “the laws of history” as yielded by a social science or sciences can and should lead to the prediction of future social phenomena. Why should we not conceive of a social science which would function as the theoretical natural sciences function and yield precise unconditional predictions in the appropriate sphere of application? Popper seeks to show that this idea is based upon a series of misconceptions about the nature of science, and about the relationship between scientific laws and scientific prediction.