Philosophy of History: A problem with some theories of Speculative philosophy of history and substantive philosophy of history

Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Leslie White, Allen Johnson and Timothy Earle, and Stephen Sanderson all produced some of the more interesting theories of history, social change and cultural evolution but their theories have a common deficiency. None of them provide an ultimate explanation for social, cultural and historical change. This failure was rectified by J. S. Mill who suggested increasing human knowledge was the ultimate cause of social, cultural and historical change. However even Mill did not ask what caused the increasing human knowledge and why the knowledge had to be acquired in a particular order and how this could affect human history.