Volume 3
Written By Elizabeth Boyle
Symposium: Uses of Theory in the Study of History
Heinz Lubasz, "Introduction," History and Theory 3, no. 1 (1963), 3-5.
Samuel H. Beer, "Causal Explanation and Imaginative Re-Enactment," History and Theory 3, no. 1 (1963), 6-29.
The Hempel-Popper dictum that causal explanations require hypotheses cast in universal form encourages bad generalizations. Generalizations relative to a context are more fruitful for the social scientist (even physical "laws" may be relative to such contexts as an expanding universe). Causal explanation is complementary, not opposed, to explanations by imaginative re-enactment. Rational explanation, one type of imaginative re-enactment, often involves causal explanation, in showing chosen means to be appropriate for a given end; and causal explanation usually involves imaginative re-enactment in establishing the meaning that actions have for agents.
Charles Tilly, "The Analysis of a Counter-Revolution," History and Theory 3, no. 1 (1963), 30-58.
The Hempel-Popper dictum that causal explanations require hypotheses cast in universal form encourages bad generalizations. Generalizations relative to a context are more fruitful for the social scientist (even physical "laws" may be relative to such contexts as an expanding universe). Causal explanation is complementary, not opposed, to explanations by imaginative re-enactment. Rational explanation, one type of imaginative re-enactment, often involves causal explanation, in showing chosen means to be appropriate for a given end; and causal explanation usually involves imaginative re-enactment in establishing the meaning that actions have for agents.
Michael Walzer, "Puritanism as a Revolutionary Ideology," History and Theory 3, no. 1 (1963), 59-90.
The Hempel-Popper dictum that causal explanations require hypotheses cast in universal form encourages bad generalizations. Generalizations relative to a context are more fruitful for the social scientist (even physical "laws" may be relative to such contexts as an expanding universe). Causal explanation is complementary, not opposed, to explanations by imaginative re-enactment. Rational explanation, one type of imaginative re-enactment, often involves causal explanation, in showing chosen means to be appropriate for a given end; and causal explanation usually involves imaginative re-enactment in establishing the meaning that actions have for agents.
William Nisbet Chambers, "Party Development and Party Action: The American Origins," History and Theory 3, no. 1 (1963), 91-120.
The Hempel-Popper dictum that causal explanations require hypotheses cast in universal form encourages bad generalizations. Generalizations relative to a context are more fruitful for the social scientist (even physical "laws" may be relative to such contexts as an expanding universe). Causal explanation is complementary, not opposed, to explanations by imaginative re-enactment. Rational explanation, one type of imaginative re-enactment, often involves causal explanation, in showing chosen means to be appropriate for a given end; and causal explanation usually involves imaginative re-enactment in establishing the meaning that actions have for agents.
REVIEW ESSAYS
J. G. A. Pocock on Reappraisals in History by J. H. Hexter, History and Theory 3, no. 1 (1963), 121-135.
Jacob M. Price on What is History? The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, January-March 1961 by Edward Hallett Carr, History and Theory 3, no. 1 (1963), 136-145.
ARTICLES
W. B. Gallie, "The Historical Understanding," History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963), 149-202.
The exercise of the capacity to follow stories, sequences of acceptable though not predictable incidents making for a promised though always open conclusion, constitutes historical understanding. Followable accounts of particular actions of individual men (the historian's main concern) must invoke institutional facts about societal life. The historian's task is not deductively to explain away all apparent contingencies, which can be understood through their contributions to acceptable outcomes and are crucial to historical narratives. The scholar's reasoned emendation of a defective text, not scientific explanation, is the best model for historical explanations., which interrupt narrations to aid our story-following capacity when vision is blurred or credulity taxed.
Vernon K. Dibble, "Four Types of Inference from Documents to Events," History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963), 203-221.
Documentary evidence can be testimony, to which probabilistic socialscientific laws (rather than some sixth sense) are applied to infer events; social bookkeeping, documents produced by groups and organizations, for which a few general inferential principles are statable; correlates, by virtue of specific historical knowledge, or perhaps eventually based upon general rules for correlating documents with events; or direct indicators, documents which are themselves the objects of investigation. Testimony and social bookkeeping differ in source and technique, correlates and direct indicators in technique alone. Curiously, almost all manuals of historiography assume that the historian need only know how to evaluate testimony; in fact the methods of all four inferential procedures must be mastered.
G. Lichtheim, " Sartre, Marxism, and History," History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963), 222-246.
Sartre in Critique de la raison dialectique, 1, aspires to change the world by carrying Marxism to completion; yet his Marxism is an unresolved synthesis of Marx, Hegel, and Heidegger. The short introductory section contains most of its novel and fruitful ideas, and can be treated as the key to the work. It rests on the dialectic of being and consciousness (found in Marx but not in Engels' "dialectical materialism") which Sartre applies to the problem of mediation, so as to take account of the particularity of persons and events (regularly ignored by Marxism). Detouring into anthropology, Sartre presents rivalry for perpetually scarce food as the fundamental element of human life and proposes a Hobbesian political philosophy. Though his perception of "structures" and grasp of unique historical moments are less convincing than his insight into psychology, he shows that if "historicism" is pushed to its limit, it becomes a self-conscious philosophy which must be taken seriously.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Lawrence Walker on Feudal Society by Marc Bloch and L. A. Manyon, History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963), 247-255.
George H. Nadel on Gesammelte Abhandlungen: Zur Kritik der geschichtlichen Existenz by Karl Löwith, History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963), 209-217.
William R. Taylor on The Historical Revolution: English Historical Writing and Thought 1560- 1640 by F. Smith Fussner, History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963), 255-261.
Burleigh Wilkins on Turner and Beard: American Historical Writing Reconsidered by Lee Benson, History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963), 261-266.
Melvin Richter on Montesquieu: A Critical Biography by Robert Shackleton, History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963), 266-274.
W. M. Simon on Begegnungen mit der Geschichte by Thedor Schieder, History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963), 274-278.
Alan B. Spitzer on Radicalism and the Revolt against Reason: The Social Theories of Georges Sorel by Irving Louis Horowitz, History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963), 261-266.
Nelly S. Hoyt on Some 20th-Century Historians: Essays on Eminent Europeans by S. William Halperin, History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963), 284-287.
ARTICLES
George H. Nadel, "Philosophy of History before Historicism,'" History and Theory 3, no. 3 (1964), 291-315.
Philosophy of history before the nineteenth century was based on the classical theory of history. That theory, in justifying the purpose of historical studies, maintained that history was a storehouse of good and bad examples; was of particular use in educating statesmen, since it provided them with vicarious experience; and was a more compelling moral guide than the abstractions of philosophy. The unquestioned authority of Polybius and other ancient historians, as well as. of the definitions of history by Pseudo-Dionysius (as "philosophy teaching by ex amples") and Cicero (as "mistress of life"), perpetuated the exemplar theory. The rise of professional, academic historical study rendered it irrelevant; Bolingbroke was its last notable exponent.
Helen P. Liebel, "Philosophical Idealism in the Historische Zeitschrift, 1859-1914," History and Theory 3, no. 3 (1964), 316-330.
Most articles on philosophy of history appearing in the Historische Zeitschrift prior to World War I were concerned with the principles and presuppositions of German idealism, as transmitted to professional historians by Humboldt's Ideenlehre and Ranke. The only serious challenge to this tradition came from Karl Lamprecht (considered for the editorship after von Sybel's death), but it was beaten off by the new editor, Meinecke. After World War I, insistence on the absolute uniqueness of the historian's subject-matter was replaced by growing realization that a middle ground existed between the unique event and the cosmic flow of universal history.
John Brooke, "Namier and Namierism," History and Theory 3, no. 3 (1964), 331-347.
Namier's contribution to historiography, the techniques used in studying the lives of all members of parliament, can be compared to Galileo's use of the telescope. As the astronomer with more powerful instruments resolves such "constellations" as Andromeda, so the historical research team dissolves such specious classes as eighteenth-century "parties." For Namier, depth psychology, too, was essential to history as to all social sciences. At some point the historian must yield to the psychologist and sociologist; but some questions can be settled only by faith. Thus Namier's work (as he recognized) depreciates the value of history.
Otto B. Van Der Sprenkel, "Max Weber on China," History and Theory 3, no. 3 (1964), 348-370.
Weber made a fundamental contribution to Sinology despite ignorance of the language, reliance on limited sources, many factual mistakes, and the fundamental methodological error of using data separated by two or three millenia as evidence of a social structure falsely assumed to be unchanging. Weber saw the stability of Chinese society as resulting from a balance between the Emperor-with his instrument the bureaucracy-and local lineages and guilds. His ideal type of patrimonial bureaucracy leads to some distortion of the evidence, and his picture of the lineage is overdrawn; nevertheless he asks all the right questions and his concepts lead to a more profound knowledge of Chinese social history.
REVIEW ESSAYS
M. Brewster Smith on The Achieving Society by David C. McClelland, History and Theory 3, no. 3 (1964), 371-381.
H. R. Trevor-Roper on David Hume. Politico e Storico by Guiseppe Giarrizzo, History and Theory 3, no. 3 (1964), 381-389.
Sidney Hook on Metaphysics and Historicity, the Aquinas Lecture by Emil L. Fackenheim, History and Theory 3, no. 3 (1964), 389-392.
Igor S. Kon on Storia e Storicismo Nella Filosofia Contemporanea by Pietro Rossi, History and Theory 3, no. 3 (1964), 393-400.
Bibliography of Works in the Philosophy of History 1958-1961
M. Nowicki, “Introductory Note,” History and Theory, Beiheft 3 (1964), v.
M. Nowicki, “Chronological Note,” History and Theory, Beiheft 3 (1964), 1-19.
John C. Rule, “Appendix: Supplement to Bibliography of Works in the Philosophy of History, 1945-1957,” History and Theory, Beiheft 3 (1964), 20-25.
Craig's Rules of Historical Evidence, 1699
Several chapters from John Craig's Theologiae Christianae Principia Mathematica, a book purporting to validate scientifically certain Christian truths against agnostics, reprinted and translated for the first time.
Joannis Craig, “Theologiae Christianae Principia Mathematica,” History and Theory, Beiheft 4 (1965), 1-31.
Cover image: "Taking Off,” by Zac Ong (7 April 2018)
