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A Source-Oriented Theory of Historical Study
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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A gap exists between the philosophers of history and the practitioners. Both groups proudly encourage their splendid isolation from the other. The philosophers tend to consider the practitioners incompetent to philosophize about historical study; the practitioners tend to think that the philosophers engage only in “flimflam.” Insofar as one can judge from the practitioners’ attempts to formulate theories of historical study and the philosophers’ attempts to explain historical practice, each group is right about the other. As a result, the practitioners of history rarely ponder theoretical issues because they tend to feel that there are more worthwhile pursuits, such as studying the past. The philosophers rarely examine how historical study is actually done because they tend to feel that the practice is not important for their exquisitely designed theoretical models.
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- Copyright © 1988 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 See, e.g.: "no amount of historical competence especially qualifies a man to do philosophy of history, for the latter is an exercise in philosophical, not historical techniques." Quoted by Victorino Tejera in History as a Human Science: The Conception of History in Some Classic American Philosophers, Lanham, MD, University Press of America, 1984, p. 22.
2 J.H. Hexter's word in "The One That Got Away", New York Review of Books, February 9, 1967, p. 26. See also M.I. Finley, Ancient History: Evidence and Models, New York, Viking, 1986, pp. 1-2: "Historians… are reluctant to analyse themselves and their activity; they leave that to the philosophers, whose efforts they then dismiss as ignorant or irrilevant or both."
3 Alan Donagan, "Can Philosophers Learn from Historians?" in Mind, Science and History, ed. by Howard E. Kiefer and Milton K. Munitz, Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 1970, p. 234.
4 For a discussion of some theories other than those presented below, see my article, "A Typology of Historical Theories," Diogenes, no. 129, Spring, 1985, esp. pp. 131-139.
5 M.T. Kachenovskii, "Istoricheskie spravki ob Ioanne, Ekzarkhe Bolgarskom," Vestnik Evropy, July-August, 1826, p. 199.
6 Michael Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes, Cambridge, 1933, p. 107. Johnston has suggested that Experience and Its Modes may be "the only major work in philosophy to have been profoundly influenced by [Collingwood's] Speculum Mentis." William M. Johnston, The Formative Years of R.G. Collingwood, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1967, p 69. For a brief comparison of Oakeshott's and Collingwood's views, see W.H. Dray, "Michael Oakeshott's Theory of History," Politics and Experience, edited by Preston King and B.C. Parekh, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp. 19-20.
7 Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes, p. 42.
8 Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes, p. 107.
9 Ronald J. Butler "Other Dates", Mind, vol. 68, 1959, p. 24.
10 G.J. Renier, History: Its Purpose and Method, London, 1950, pp. 96-97.
11 Mandelbaum, The Problem of Historical Knowledge, p. 186.
12 Ibid., p. 187.
13 Ibid., p. 188.
14 W.H. Walsh, An Introduction to Philosophy of History, London, Hutchinson House, 1951, p. 81. I think Walsh meant to say that the statements are treated as reliable evidence. There is no question that the statements are authentic statements. They might be deceptive, and even intentionally so, but that deceptiveness affects their reliability, not their authenticity as statements.
15 Walsh, An Introduction, p. 81.
16 Nowell-Smith makes such a source-based, past-oriented argument in trying to reconcile the "realist" and "constructionist" approaches to historical study. P.H. Nowell-Smith, "The Constructionist Theory of History," History and Theory. Studies in the Philosophy of History, Beiheft 16, The Constitution of the Historical Past, Middletown, CT, Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1977, p. 1.
17 Walsh, An Introduction, pp. 85-90.
18 Ibid., p. 87. See also p. 85: "the relativism of the coherence leaves the whole structure in the air, with the result that we have no effective criterion for distinguishing between the real and the imaginary."
19 Such a conclusion has been reached independently by a number of people in various fields. See, e.g., Michael Guillen, Bridges to Infinity: The Human Side of Mathematics, Los Angeles, CA, Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1983, pp. 61-72, "Inventing Reality," esp. p. 71: "The evidence in algebra for the principle of plenitude, combined with similar evidence in other branches of mathematics, makes it seem as if the mathematical imagination is a sixth sense… It doesn't appear that we are merely inventing ideas that just happen to describe sensible objects; it seems, rather, that the mathematical imagination is an extra sense with which we can perceive the natural world." For another formulation of this idea, see Fred L. Karpin, The Art of Card Reading at Bridge", New York, Dover Publications, 1982, p. 105: "Card reading is expanded to include not only physical attributes of sight and hearing but also the attribute of creativity, which embodies the sense of practical imagination (if I might be permitted to create this sixth sense)… And the "constructor" then proceeds on the assumption that the ideal, imagined world is the real world." For a different understanding of the "sixth sense," see Oliver Sacks, The Man Who mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, New York, Harper & Row, 1987, p. 43.
20 See, e.g., T.P., Wiseman, Clio's Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman Literature, Leicester University Press, 1979, p. 23: "The idea of creating history out of next to nothing was well known to the Greeks…"
21 Jerzy Topolski, Metodologia historii, Warsaw, Państwowe wydawn. naukowe, 1973, p. 355.
22 S.V. Utechin made this observation to me. For a discussion of this point, see my review of A.G. Kuz'min, Nachal'nye etapy drevnerusskogo letopisaniia, Moscow, 1977, and Ja S. Lur'e, Obshcherusskie letopisi XIV-XV vv., Leningrad, 1976, in Kritika, Vol. 16, 1980, pp. 19-21; and my "A Typology of Historical Theories", op. cit. p. 138.
23 Topolski, Metodologia historii, p. 201.
24 See, e.g., Nancy Whittier Heer, Politics and History in the Soviet Union, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1971, p. 23: "the ideological rhetoric as well as the practice of the craft make it clear that historiography must continue to reflect party consciousness…" For a discussion of the use of history by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, see Marc Ferro, "Aspects and Variations of Soviet History," The Use and Abuse of History: Or How History is Taught, London, 1984, pp. 114-144.
25 Harold N. Lee, "A Criticism of the Marxian Interpretation of History," Tulane Studies in Philosophy, vol. 1, 1952, p. 101.
26 John Gribban, In Search of the Big Bang: Quantum Physics and Cosmology, New York, 1986, p. xv.
27 See Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics, Garden City, NY, Anchor Press, 1985, pp. 16-27, where he discusses eight views of quantum reality.
28 James Harvey Robinson, The New History, New York, Macmillan, 1912, p. 1, reprinted with omissions in The Varieties of History: From Voltaire to the Present, edited by Fritz Stem, Cleveland, OH, World Publishing, 1956, p. 258.
29 See, e.g., E.H. Carr, What is History?, New York, 1962, p. 26.
30 Ernst Badian, "Alexander the Great, 1948-67," in The Classical World Bibliography of Greek and Roman History, New York, Garland, 1978, p. 197.
31 Ibid., p. 199.
32 Murray G. Murphey, Our Knowledge of the Historical Past, Indianapolis, IN, Bobbs-Merill, 1973, p. 1.
33 Ibid., p. 95.
34 Ibid., p. 27.
35 Wilhelm von Humboldts Gesammelte Schriften, 17 vols., Berlin, 1903-1936, vol. 4, 1820-1822, p. 35 (English translation published in "On the Historian's Task," History and Theory, vol. 6, 1967, p. 57).
36 Edward W. Strong, "Fact and Understanding in History," Journal of Philosophy, vol. 44, 1947, p. 617.
37 Walsh, An Introduction, p. 18.
38 Patrick Gardiner, The Nature of Historical Explanation, Oxford, 1952, pp. 60-61.
39 R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1956, p. 246.
40 Ibid., p. 282. Collingwood's statement here represents a view different from the one he expressed in 1928. See R.G. Collingwood, "The Limits of Historical Knowledge," Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 3, 1928, esp. pp. 218-219 (reprinted in Essays in the Philosophy of History: R.G. Collingwood, ed. by William Debbins, Austin, TX, University of Texas Press, 1965, pp. 90-103). Collingwood's earlier view corresponds more closely to the one I am arguing in this paper.
41 Arthur C. Danto, Analytical Philosophy of History, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 26.
42 G.R. Elton, The Practice of History, New York, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967, p. 54.
43 Alan Donagan, "Realism and Historical Instrumentalism," Revue internationale de philosophie, vol. 29, 1975, p. 81.
44 George G. Iggers, New Directions in European Historiography, Middletown, CT, Wesleyan University Press, 1975, p. 5.
45 Leon J. Goldstein, Historical Knowing, Austin, TX, University of Texas Press, 1976, p. 11.
46 C. Behan McCuflagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 3.
47 Leon J. Goldstein, "Evidence and Events in History," Philosophy of Science, vol. 29, 1962, p. 177; idem, "History and the Primacy of Knowing," History and Theory. Studies in the Philosophy of History, Beiheft 16, 1977, The Constitution of the Historical Past, pp. 32, 34, 35.
48 Goldstein, Historical Knowing, pp. xx-xxi.
49 Collingwood, "The Limits of Historical Knowledge," p. 219.
50 For Daniel Goleman's definition of a "vital lie" as the "myth that stands in place of a less comfortable truth," see his Vital Lies, Simple Truths, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1981, pp. 16-19.
51 Aage Petersen, "The Philosophy of Niels Bohr, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 19, 1963, p. 12 (reprinted in Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, edited by A.P. French and P.J. Kennedy, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 299-310).
52 Emst Mach, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development, 5th ed., LaSalle, IL, Open Court Publishing, 1942 (1st pub., 1883), pp. 589-590.
53 S.M. Dancoff, "Does the Neutrino Really Exist?" Bulletin of Atomic Physicists, vol. 8, 1952, p. 140.
54 James West Hamilton and Mark Hamilton Davidson, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection, 2nd ed., New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1985, p. 58.
55 Goleman, Vital Lies, p. 95.
56 Ulric Neisser, "John Dean's Memory: A Case Study," Cognition, vol. 9, 1981, p. 9.
57 Ibid., p. 18.
58 Ibid., p. 16. [my emphasis].
59 Murphey, Our Knowledge, pp. 12-13.
60 Nowell-Smith, "The Constructionist Theory," p. 1.
61 Barzini described this same phenomenon in a much different context: "the thing and its representation… [can] coincide exactly. They may also coincide approximately, or may not coincide at all. There is no sure way of telling." Luigi Barzini, The Italians, New York, 1964, p. 90.
62 Collingwood, "The Limits of Historical Knowledge," p. 216.
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