  For both Hayek and Popper, the primary motivation for respecting the precepts of methodological individualism was to avoid “grand theory” in the style of Auguste Comte, G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx. Yet the motivation for avoiding this sort of grand theory was not so much that it promoted bad theory, but that it promoted habits of mind, such as “collectivism,” “rationalism,” or “historicism,” that were thought to be conducive to totalitarianism. Thus the sins of “collectivism,” and “collectivist” thought patterns, for both Hayek and Popper, were primarily political. Yet as time wore on, and the dangers of creeping totalitarianism in Western societies became increasingly remote, the fear of collectivism that underlay the debates over methodological individualism became increasingly attenuated.