[Vocabulary] Conjecture which is very far-fetched...

[Habituellement]

Hello.

I have a question concerning the passage in bold below.

The context of my question:
I am writing an academic article which mainly deals with the philosophy of Herbert Spencer.
Spencer maintains that capitalism has developed and spread in the course of history and that this fact (i.e. the development and spread) is not due to somebody's arbitrary or capricious will or to pure accident; rather, it is due to the high productivity of capitalism which enabled populations to increase in wealth (economic growth) and in numbers (demographic growth). Spencer maintains that, in view of the reason why capitalism developed and spread, the abandonment of capitalism now would have tragic economic and demographic consequences.
Later in my article I try to use an analogy to better explain Spencer's argument.

The passage:

By the same token, one could claim, for example, that, if history showed that the development and spread of language[SUP]1[/SUP] everywhere in the world have been merely arbitrary or accidental, then peoples[SUP]2[/SUP] could possibly decide to abandon language without catastrophic consequences – a conjecture which is very far-fetched of course.

[SUP]1 [/SUP]I mean language in general here, not one idiom or another in particular.
[SUP]2[/SUP] Maybe populations would be better than peoples here.

By the passage in bold, I mean that, of course, language developed and spread in the world not for arbitrary reasons but because it enabled people to communicate and to collaborate effectively, to achieve learning, to share information, etc. So, if language was abandoned, there would be catastrophic consequences for people, but if, on the contrary, language developed and spread in the world for no particular reasons, maybe it could be easily abandoned by people.

Please could you tell me whether the passage in bold is good English and understandable?
Thank you very much.

 

[probus]

It seems perfect to me. In fact, I would be proud to have written it myself.

 

[jutfrank]

There are several issues with it, of various kinds. I don't think I should rewrite this for you, so I'll just point out the kinds of error, as I see them:

1) for example (apparently unnecessary)
2) history showed (sense)
3) have been (grammar)
4) peoples (vocabulary)
5) could possibly decide (style of phrase)
6) conjecture (sense)

It's a reasonable analogy, I suppose.

 

[probus]

Both the question and my reply pertain only to the bold-face portion of the text.

 

[jutfrank]

Both the question and my reply pertain only to the bold-face portion of the text.

Oh, right. I was mistakenly looking at the whole passage.

In that case, my only issue is with conjecture.

 

[Habituellement]

Oh, right. I was mistakenly looking at the whole passage.

In that case, my only issue is with conjecture.

Thank you jutfrank for all your remarks!
I have chosen the term conjecture to refer to the part "if history showed (...) arbitrary or accidental".
Do you think another word (hypothesis?) would be better?

Moreover, the sense of "if history showed" here is "if history taught" I think. Maybe "to teach" would be clearer than "to show" (?).