Volume 2
Written By Elizabeth Boyle
ARTICLES
W. H. Walsh, "Plato and the Philosophy of History: History and Theory in the Republic," History and Theory 2, no. 1 (1962), 3-16.
The sequence from ideal state to tyran I ny contained in Books VIII-IX of the Republic constitutes neither history nor philosophy of history, but rather completes Plato's overall theory of politics, dealing, like every theoretical science, with simplified or pure cases, and narrated purely for dramatic effort. Popper's view that Plato was fundamentally an historicist is incorrect. Plato makes no straightforward comments on philosophy of history. Perhaps, like many Greeks, he surveyed history pessimistically, but he did not propound an iron law of decay. As a social scientist Plato held that there are laws of political change without supposing the course of history is unalterably fixed.
Georg G. Iggers, "The Image of Ranke in American and German Historical Thought," History and Theory 2, no. 1 (1962), 17-40.
in America, Ranke has been known for his methodology: critical examination of sources in order to establish the facts. Ranke's We es eigentlich gewesen was the motto of "scientific" history renouncing all generalizations and philosophy for detailed description. In Germany, Ranke was considered anti-aprioristic, opposed to any schematization of history, but not anti-philosophical. Ranke, influenced by German idealism, sought to transcend mere factual reconstruction by proceeding from con templating particulars to understanding general truths and introspective apprehension of - living reality. Despite the work of refugee scholars, Americans are only slowly discovering Ranke's philosophical assumptions.
Marvin Levich, "Disagreement and Controversy in History," History and Theory 2, no. 1 (1962), 41-41.
Most historical controversies are factual disagreements only in appearance, involving equivocations on some crucial term (e.g., "Renaissance"). These equivocations, however, are neither elimina le nor silly. Historical controversies do reflect genuine disagreements about the merits of different explanation-types: anticipatory (invoking properties resembling and preceding the explanandum), causal, or stylistic. Crucial terms, value-laden and intellectually prestigious, transfer status to explanatory events. Historians' explanation preferences perhaps depend upon their strategies for improving society: if through cultural changes, causal; altering institutions internally, anticipatory; emulating another period, stylistic. Historical controversies do not justify skepticism about the objective worth of historical propositions or inquiry.
Jean Gaulmier, "Volney et ses Leçons d'Histoire," History and Theory 2, no. 1 (1962), 52-65.
Volney, one of the Idéologues and confidant of Jefferson and Napoleon, published his Lessons of History in 1795 as Professor of History in the newly-founded Ecole Normale. Volney anticipates Comte in his comparison of science with history, rigorous standards for validation of historical facts, and sketch of the history of human development. His emphasis on scrupulous analysis before synthesis is attempted shows that the Idéologues were not so prone to fanciful and grotesque analogies as is often believed. Nor does his skepticism really reduce history to a "conjectural science." There is much learning, drawn from his travels and political life, as well as remarkably advanced and original theory in the Lessons of History.
REVIEW ESSAYS
John Herman Randall, Jr. on The Logic of the Humanities by Ernst Cassirer and Clarence S. Howe, History and Theory 2, no. 1 (1962), 66-74.
Peter Winch on The Logic of Social Enquiry by Quentin Gibson and Kegan Paul, History and Theory 2, no. 1 (1962), 74-78.
Klaus Epstein on Ethics in a World of Power: The Political Ideas of Friedrich Meinecke by Richard W. Sterling, History and Theory 2, no. 1 (1962), 79-85.
Irving Louis Horowitz on Estructura y Sentido de la Historia: Según la Literatura Apocaliptica by Gerardo Leisersohn Baendel, La Filosofia de la Historia, de Nietzsche a Toynbee by Leon Dujovne, and Teoria de la Historia: Introduccion a los Estudios Historicos by Carlos M. Rama, History and Theory 2, no. 1 (1962), 85-89.
Michael Walzer on The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation: 1570-1640 by Charles H. George and Katherine George, History and Theory 2, no. 1 (1962), 89-96.
George S. Rosenberg on The Mandarins: The Circulation of Elites in China, 1600-1900 by Robert M. Marsh, History and Theory 2, no. 1 (1962), 96-100.
COMMUNICATION
F. A. Hayek, "The Uses of 'Gresham's Law' as an Illustration in Historical Theory," History and Theory 2, no. 1 (1962), 101-102.
ARTICLES
John Passmore, "Explanation in Everyday Life, in Science, and in History," History and Theory 2, no. 2 (1962), 105-123.
Explanations cannot be identified by logical form-explanations make use of forms of argument to remove puzzlement. Different criteria determine the satisfactoriness of different types of explanation (elucidations, justifications, etc.), and the severity of their application distinguishes scientific, historical, and everyday explanations. For example, good causal explanations are intelligible (invoke familiar connections), adequate (cite sufficient conditions), and correct (cite necessary conditions). Scientists, interested in prediction, seek strictly necessary and sufficient conditions. Historians, who already know the facts, can be more casual-their standards for explanations approximate everyday standards, where an intelligible explanation is usually assumed to be adequate, and in turn correct.
James William Johnson, "Chronological Writing: Its Concepts and Development," History and Theory 2, no. 2 (1962), 124-145.
Chronology, unlike history, is not confined to human experiences, disregards causes in the human sphere, and emphasizes the occurrence rather than the sense of an event. For the Jews chronology was tribal records, for the Church fathefs (and later for Protestants) a theological weapon, for the Byzantines a framework within which the Western Empire's sociopolitical dogmas were challenged. During the seventeenth century the very popularity and proliferation of chronologies began to bring them into disrepute. Historical studies nevertheless drew on chronological themes and concepts (e.g., history and ethnology assimilated racial genealogies). A coherent dating scheme, collections of primary sources, and critical techniques constitute chronology's little-acknowledged legacy to historiography.
Arthur C. Danto, "Narrative Sentences," History and Theory 2, no. 2 (1962), 146-179.
Intelligible substitutions in "the history of x" designate temporal structures. Narrative sentences describe some event E-1 in terms of a later E-2 thereby locating both events in some x. Events located in some x of interest are historically significant. Recognizing a present event's historical significance requires predicting both future events and future historians' interests. "The future is hidden" means: historians lack the sorts of laws astronomers have. "The future is open" means: we are ignorant of future historians' statements about us-otherwise we could falsify their sentences just as we can, if we wish, falsify past predictions about our actions.
Walter D. Love, "Edmund Burke and an Irish Historiographical Controversy," History and Theory 2, no. 2 (1962), 180-198.
Burke encouraged others to write a competent history showing that misgovernment provoked the Irish wars, only to find himself dragged into a feud about ancient Irish history. The Orientals, supported by almost all the documentary evidence, thought the earliest settlers were Easterners carrying Phoenician and Egyptian culture; the Scandians, relying on analogies to Lockean psychology, thought barbarian Northern invaders populated Ireland, with civilization emerging only through slow growth. Burke's position-expressed only in private correspondence-characteristically avoided extremes: there were Eastern colonizers, but they did not transmit a civilization. Eighteenth-century historiography, in Ireland as elsewhere, was at low ebb, but the Orientals' comparisons between civilizations and collection of Irish manuscripts and the Scandian evolutionary theory were in the mainstream of future historiography.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Henri Irénée Marrou on Philosophie et Histoire Chez Wilhelm Dilthey by Jean-François Suter, History and Theory 2, no. 2 (1962), 199-209.
Heinz Lubasz on Gesammelte Abhandlungen: Zur Kritik der geschichtlichen Existenz by Karl Löwith, History and Theory 2, no. 2 (1962), 209-217.
William R. Taylor on History as Romantic Art: Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman by David Levin and The American Historian: A Social Intellectual History of the Writings of the American Past by Harvey Wish, History and Theory 2, no. 2 (1962), 217-223.
Robert E. MacMaster on The Sense of History in Greek and Shakespearean Drama by Tom F. Driver, History and Theory 2, no. 2 (1962), 223-228.
ARTICLES
Pieter Geyl, "Huizinga as Accuser of His Age,'" History and Theory 2, no. 3 (1963), 231-262.
Huizinga never resolved his incompatible inclinations to view history as serious, scholarly, rational, intellectual and as playful, imaginative, aesthetic, and contemplative. The social aspects of the extra-scientific approach, which saw culture as an activity of the elite serving the noble and beautiful, account for Huizinga's aversion to the modern democratization of society in the larger role played by the masses, and in turn for his methodological errors: idealizing the past and treating the West, both non-totalitarian and totalitarian, as a single culture. Huizinga, blind to the economic and political realities from which he divorced culture, demanded renewed spiritual values rather than socio-political reform.
W. von Leyden, "History and the Concept of Relative Time," History and Theory 2, no. 3 (1963), 263-285.
The development by Locke, Herder, and others of the concept of relative time, each time unit differing qualitatively and intrinsically according to the process of which it forms a part, bears on the nature of historical explanation. There is no universal time; the world "is" as it "appears" for every viewpoint; achievements of different periods, seemingly the same, differ by virtue of their contexts; phenomena are truly individualizable only through appraisal relative to these contexts which make explanation possible; even contemporary generations perceive a moment in different historical times; any of numerous different though equivalent descriptions can logically replace temporal statements.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Judith N. Shklar on Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt, History and Theory 2, no. 3 (1963), 286-292.
S. E. Morison on La Idea del Descubrimiento de América. História de Esa Interpretacion y Critica de sus Fundamentos by Edmundo O'Gorman and The Invention of America. An Inquiry into the Historical Nature of the New World and the Meaning of Its History by Edmundo O'Gorman, History and Theory 2, no. 3 (1963), 292-296.
Asa Briggs on The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects by Lewis Mumford, History and Theory 2, no. 3 (1963), 297-305.
Kenneth E. Bock on A Study of History, Volume XII: Reconsiderations by Arnold J. Toynbee, History and Theory 2, no. 3 (1963), 301-307.
Adam Schaff on Marx's Concept of Man by Erich Fromm Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx by Karl Marx and Robert Tucker, History and Theory 2, no. 3 (1963), 307-318.
Jacqueline de Romilly on Les Vues Historiques d'Eusèbe de Césarée Durant la Période Prénicéenne by Jean Sirinelli, History and Theory 2, no. 3 (1963), 318-323.
Wolfgang J. Mommsen on Wege zum Historischen Universum by Joseph Vogt, History and Theory 2, no. 3 (1963), 323-326.
Towards an Historiography of Science by Joseph Agassi
Bacon's inductivist philosophy of science divides thinkers into the scientific and the prejudiced, using as a standard the up-to-date science textbook. Inductivists regard the history of science as progressing smoothly, from facts rather than from problems, to increasingly general theories, undisturbed by contending scientific schools. Conventionalists regard theories as pigeonholes for classifying facts; history of science is the development of increasingly simple theories, neither true nor false. Conventionalism is useless for reconstructing and weighing conflicts between schools, and overemphasizes science's internal organic growth. For Popper, not for inductivists or conventionalists, the successful criticism of theories is the heart of science. Popper's view admits the existence of valuable errors and enables us to avoid being wise after the event, thereby improving our understanding of the history of science through reconstructions of the actual interplay of theories and facts.
“The Inductivist Philosophy,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 1-3.
“The Ritualistic Function of Inductive Histories of Science,” History and Theory 2, Beiheft 2 (1963), 3-6.
“The Standard Problems of the Inductivist Historian,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 7-11.
“History of Science-As it is and as it Ought to be,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 12-14.
“Amperé's Discovery,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 20-23.
“The Broad Outline of the History of Science,” History and Theory 2, Beiheft 2 (1963), 23-28.
“The Rise of the Conventionalist Philosophy,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 28-31.
“The Continuity Theory and the Emergence Technique,” History and Theory 2, Beiheft 2 (1963), 31-33.
“The Cancerous Growth of Continuity,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 33-40.
“The Comparative Method,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 40-45.
“Priestley's Dissent,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 45-48.
“The Advantage of Avoiding being Wise after the Event,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 48-51.
“The Difficulty of Avoiding being Wise after the Event,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 51-54.
“The Obstacles on the Way to a New Idea,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 54-60.
“Obstacles on the Way to a New Fact,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 60-67.
“Oersted's Discovery,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 67-74.
“Historical Explanations,” History and Theory, Beiheft 2 (1963), 74-79.
Cover image: Untitled, by Possessed Photography (9 June 2018)
