Possible Worlds in Historical Explanation

Bibliographic Data

ID4496072
AuthorsT A Climo, P G A Howells, Peter Howells
Year1976
Volume15
Issue1
Pages1
Publication date1976-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory and Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2656 • E-ISSN: 1468-2303
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2504873
OpenAlexW2058307789
LanguageEN
Citations received7

Most historians would acknowledge causal statements to be indispensable to their work. Most of these again would agree that the construction of such statements raises frequent and sometimes even intractable problems. We know why they are indispensable. Even if we study the past for no more profound reason than because we wish to understand it, then that understanding must involve understanding why. History devoid of explanation can be no more than description. We know less, however, of the problems involved in explanation. Readers of these pages could be forgiven for thinking that the only issue at stake, following Carl Hempel, is whether all historical events are to be explained by reference to covering laws -answer this question and the difficulties are resolved. Unhappily this is simply not the case. While we would readily argue that in the absence of laws very little can be said about causality, we would deny that all causal questions in history are to be resolved by recourse to the traditional regularity analysis with which most historians are familiar. Traditionally a causal succession is taken to be a succession that instantiates a regularity. Not all regularities are admissible-we distinguish mere accidental regularities from ones in which we feel an interest by referring to the latter as causal laws, which in the case of economic historians are often generalizations of economic behavior tested and accepted on their behalf by economists. In present day regularity analyses, a cause is defined (roughly) as any member of any minimal set of actual conditions that are jointly sufficient, given the laws, for the existence of the effect.1 But there are problems. Consider the following

Epistemology · History · Monetary Policy and Economic Impact · Philosophy