Typologies and Cycles in Intellectual History

The introduction and conclusion of Metahistory by themselves present sufficient material for both an appreciation and critique of White's approach to intellectual history. The discussion which follows confines itself to them and pursues the following lines of analysis: It examines the problems of a largely formalistic analysis of the appearance and relative dominance of a given style of historical writing at a given moment in history; it asserts that without the help of implied synthetic and dynamic factors, White's formalism alone could neither account for the styles which he identifies nor explain their historical succession; and it suggests that White has introduced specifically psychological factors into his analysis, despite his professed eschewal of a psychological approach. As an appreciation of Metahistory my discussion emphasizes the heuristic value of White's systematic effort to find the best typologies for decoding, classifying, and relating complex cultural products; and his brilliant effort to organize into one coherent system major cultural cycle a considerable array of nineteenth-century cultural products. White's vigorous quest for family characteristics (in Wittgenstein's sense), his theoretical scope, and the synthetic power of his own imagination make Metahistory a singularly stimulating work of intellectual history

Economic history · Epistemology · Intellectual history · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · History · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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