A. Tucker – A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography

Автор: A. Tucker
Название книги: A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Древний мир и Античность
Страницы: 572
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

The fifty entries in this Companion cover the main issues in the philosophies of historiography and history, including natural history and the practices of historians.
Written by an international and multi-disciplinary group of experts
A cutting-edge updated picture of current research in the field
Part of the renowned Blackwell Companions series

Editing is never simple, easy, or innocent. I had to make a number of choices at the
outset: like editors of other Companions in the series, I had to decide which topics to
cover, which entries to include, and who are the best available scholars to present them
to a popular readership. But the still fluid and contested state of the philosophies of
historiography and history forced me to make fundamental editorial decisions about
the very nature of the philosophy of historiography that comparable editors were
spared, most notably about what is the scope of this sub-field of philosophy and which
terminology is appropriate for analyzing its problems.
In comparison with other meta-disciplinary philosophies, the task of defining the
philosophies of historiography and history is particularly challenging. “What is the
philosophy of science?” Asks W. H. Newton-Smith in his Introduction to A Companion
to the Philosophy of Science (2000: 2). Dividing the question in half, Newton-Smith
concluded that asking what is philosophy is one of the less fruitful philosophical occupations.
Science, as well, has no essence, though philosophers tend to agree on core
examples, “deciding just how far to extend the word ‘science’ will not be a substantial
matter” (2002). Newton-Smith suggested then looking at what people who call themselves
philosophers of science actually care about and do, acknowledging that “[t]here
is no hiding the fact that they are an eclectic lot who do a diverse range of things, some
of them strange” (2002: 3). It was quite easy though for Newton-Smith to draw a
general map of the terrain covered by people who consider themselves philosophers of
science and set the scope and details of the companion he edited on that basis.
In the philosophy of historiography, who is a philosopher of historiography is not
only contested among philosophers of historiography who wish to exclude philosophers
with whom they disagree, as in other philosophic fields, but some philosophers of
historiography do not recognize their own contributions to the field, their vocation, and
calling. Some philosophers of historiography consider themselves epistemologists, or
philosophers of science, or metaphysicians, or philosophers of literature. Even a few of
the contributors to this companion had to be told they were philosophers of historiography
(who write prose), whether or not they were aware of it.
Still, by far, the greatest challenge was terminological. In the philosophy of science
the terminology is entrenched, widely accepted, clear, and distinct. Though philosophers
dispute what are “philosophy” and “science,” they can usually agree on proper
and improper use of the word “science.” They can communicate on the basis of shared
meanings and mutual interpretations. Most fundamentally, they agree on the distinction
between the concepts of science and nature. By contrast, in the philosophies of
historiography and history there are no such wide agreements on the uses of words
that allow undistorted or at least minimally distorted communication. Even the basic
distinction between the events of the past and their representations is difficult to
express and comprehend since often the same word, “history,” is used to mean both
the events of the past and the texts that historians write about them. In a philosophical
context, where we discuss issues concerning the relation between the past, our beliefs
about it, our knowledge of it, and how we represent and justify our beliefs and
knowledge, using “history” to mean all of the above would have led inevitably to one
incredible mess! This is an even greater problem in the English language than, say,
in German, which can create easily different new meanings through compounding
existing words. In German, Geschichte is as ambiguous as history. But to distinguish
clearly the representation of the past from the past proper, one simply writes
Geschichtswissenschaft, the science or rigorous discipline of history. To distinguish
research about the past from writing about the past in narrative form, one may
resort to the distinction between Geschichtsforschung (historical research) performed
by a Geschichtsforscher from Geschichtsschreibung (history writing) written by a
Geschichtsschreiber. The only remaining ambiguity then for the German speaker
is that of Geschichtsphilosophie that may involve the philosophical analysis of
Geschichtsforschung or of Geschichtsschreibung. To avoid an incredible mess and confusions
heaped upon each other, my first task was to introduce a standardized terminology.
I attempted, though, to keep terminological innovation to the necessary minimum.
I restricted the use of history to refer to past events and processes, thus using the
word in a narrower sense than the vague English everyday use. By contrast, I use
historiography to mean the results of inquiries about history, written accounts of the
past. This use of the word historiography preserves its standard English use. The
Merriam–Webster Unabridged Dictionary (3rd edn., 2003) defines historiography as
“a. The writing of history; especially the writing of history based on the critical examination
of sources, the selection of particulars from the authentic materials, and the
synthesis of particulars into a narrative that will stand the test of the critical method.
b. the principles, theory, and history of historical writing.” The Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary (5th edn., 2002) defines historiography as “the writing of history; written
history; the study of history writing.” In accordance with these already established uses
of historiography I reserve its use here for writings about the past that result from
historiographic research (Geschichtsforschung). The people who produce historiography
are historians. Historiographic narrative (Geschichtsschreibung) is the textbook result of
historiographic research.
Another common ambiguity in the ordinary uses of history and historiography is in
their scopes. In a narrow sense, the scope of history is that of literate human civilization
and the scope of historiography is the study of documentary evidence generated
by such civilizations to infer descriptions of their past and evolution. This narrow sense
is closely linked with the Rankean research program in historiography, the inference
of historiography from documents. In a broader sense, the scope of history is all of
the past: societies have a history, but so do rocks, languages, species, and indeed the
universe. Historiography in this broader sense attempts then to infer descriptions of the
histories of everything.
There are two theoretical reasons for upholding the earlier narrower scope of the
terms: First, according to the original Rankean research program, reliable historiography,
knowledge of the human past, can be inferred only from documents that were
not written for posterity, but have been preserved usually in archives. This limitation
of the evidential base has become obsolete since historians developed methods for
reliable inference of information about the past from material remains, artefacts,
shapes of landscapes, genetic analysis of present and fossil DNA, works of art, and so
on. Second, some philosophical approaches to historiography consider it special for
having a human subject matter. Forms of description, understanding, and explanation
in historiography are allegedly different because of this special subject matter. From
this perspective, history would refer then exclusively to the human past and historiography
would describe exclusively the human past, though it would not be limited to
the inference of descriptions of the past from documentary evidence. Historiography
would be limited only by the evidence available for historical forms of the human mind,
usually documents and artefacts. Accepting such a limited scope for the terms “history”
and “historiography,” would have implied a commitment to the tenets of this particular
school of philosophy of historiography. Alternative philosophical approaches argue
that there are some common and unique features to all the sciences of the past,
sciences that are concerned with the inference of unobservable token events from their
traces in the present. To avoid commitment to one school or the other and encourage
debate and exchange between them, the terms history and historiography are used here
in their broadest and most inclusive scope, as all the past and all that can be known
about it respectively.
Sometimes, it is necessary in this philosophical context to distinguish particular realms
of history or sub-fields of historiography. On such occasions the terms history and historiography
are compounded, as in natural history that refers exclusively to nonhuman
history, and the historiography of nature that refers exclusively to descriptions
of natural history; similarly, social or cultural historiography describe social or cultural
history and, and so on. Occasionally, authors refer to academic schools that include
a social group of historians, the historiographic theoretical and methodological
approach that unites them, and the historical realm to which they apply their historiographic
approaches. For example, “Social Science History” has an established use as
referring to a school of historians who attempt to use the methods and tools of the social
sciences such as statistics to produce a historiography that is quantitative and “scientific.”
Terms that refer to a school of historians appear then either capitalized or in quotation
marks, or both.
Most significantly, and this is a distinction that does not quite exist in any natural
language or philosophic jargon, it was necessary to distinguish the philosophy of historiography
from the philosophy of history. Existing philosophical jargon distinguishes
critical or analytic philosophy of history from substantive or speculative philosophy of
history. This terminology is unsatisfactory because it is too vague and value laden and
reflects obsolete philosophical positions and distinctions, rather than the simple distinction
in subject matter between the past and knowledge or descriptions of it. The project
of critical philosophy is closely connected with the Kantian project of examining the
conditions of knowledge. While the philosophy of historiography is certainly interested
in the conditions of knowledge of history, there is much more to it than this Kantian
project. Likewise, analytic philosophy of history, the analysis of the language of historiography
and the elucidation of the concepts historians use is certainly part of the
philosophy of historiography. But the philosophy of historiography, like the philosophy
of science, does much more than the analysis of language and concepts, it examines
the epistemology of our knowledge of history, the relation between evidence and
historiography, the reliability of the methods historians use to infer beliefs about the
past, and so on, beyond the analysis of language. Philosophers of historiography are
arguably as synthetic as they are analytic. After Quine, the very distinction between
analytic and synthetic has collapsed. Substantive philosophy of history implies that
its alternatives are ephemeral, while not saying much about what this substantiality
actually means. Speculative philosophy is essentially a term of abuse.
Instead, philosophy of historiography is simply the philosophical examination of all
the aspects of our descriptions, beliefs, and knowledge of the past. The philosophy
of historiography parallels other philosophical meta-disciplinary sub-fields such as the
philosophy of science or the philosophy of economics. By contrast, the philosophy of
history is the direct philosophical examination of history. The philosophy of history examines
questions about history such as whether it is necessary or contingent, whether
it has a direction or whether it is coincidental, and if it has a direction, what it is,
and how and why it is unfolding. The philosophy of history parallels then sub-fields
of metaphysics that examine the ultimate constituent parts of everything, such as the
philosophy of nature. The distinction between the philosophy of historiography and
the philosophy of history is clearer than existing distinctions, descriptive rather than
value laden, and parallels terms that designate existing sub-fields of philosophy such
as the philosophies of science and nature.
As editor, I ensured that all the entries adhere to this unified terminology, and so
the reader can safely assume that terms in different entries have the same meanings.
Obviously, I could not interfere with the terminology used by quoted sources. Quotations
may use then the ambiguous existing terminology regarding “history,” “philosophy
of history,” and so on, and may use the same words to convey different meanings. I hope
that the contexts of the quotations will help clarify their meanings. This is as good a
solution to the terminological challenge that could be hoped for without violating the
sanctity of quoted phrases.
Following the terminology, I had to select the scope of topics to be covered. The main
dilemmas were how broad to conceive this field of philosophic research and whether
to concentrate exclusively on contemporary research or also pay attention to the history
of the field, its major historical traditions, and figures. My approach here has been
to be the most inclusive and comprehensive. I interpreted the scope of philosophies
of historiography and history most liberally to encompass all significant philosophic
topics within the broadest scope of interpretation. The longer first four entries outline
the major sub-fields that are covered. In addition to the obvious entries for philosophy
of historiography and philosophy of history, there are entries for the philosophy of
natural history and its historiography, stressing the inclusion of natural history and
historiography within the scope of the philosophies of historiography and history. Since
this Companion is intended for historians just as much as for philosophers, the fourth
entry, by a historian, covers the philosophical issues that are particularly relevant for
historians.
The second and longest part covers the main problems of the philosophies of
historiography and history, evidence, confirmation, causation, counterfactuals, contingency
and necessity, explanation and understanding, objectivity, realism, ethics, and
narrative. Though the entries are written by philosophers with diverse and indeed opposing
approaches to these problems, all the entries in the second part assume that the
distinct problems of the philosophy of historiography are deeply intertwined with
other areas of philosophy. To borrow Arthur Danto’s vivid metaphor, the philosophy
of historiography does not exist on some remote atoll where forlorn Second World War
soldiers continue fighting an obsolete long extinguished war, oblivious of the results
and indeed end of the war elsewhere. Rather, the major problems of the philosophy of
historiography from causation to evidence and confirmation to objectivity are connected
in their formulations, assumptions, and mooted solutions to similar problems in other
philosophical fields, most notably though not exclusively, epistemology, philosophy of
science, and metaphysics.
Further, since the philosophy of historiography is a constantly changing dynamic
program of research, the entries in the second part of this Companion are strictly upto-
date presentations of the current state of research on the problems they cover. There
is more, much more, to the philosophy of historiography than the old debates about
the covering law model or Verstehen. This Companion demonstrates the breadth as well
as the contemporary relevance of philosophy of historiography for other branches of
philosophy and general philosophic discussions of causation, evidence, confirmation,
origins, laws, explanation and so on. Such general discussions are parochial unless they
consider the application of general theories to the special cases of historiography and
history. Conversely, philosophies of historiography and history must consider general
discussions of the problems they consider to avoid intellectual provincialism, to benefit
from the immense strides epistemology, philosophy of science, and metaphysics have
made in our understanding of philosophical problems and how to solve them.
The third part examines specific philosophic issues in particular sub-fields of historiography
and history such as the historiography and history of science or phylogeny.
This part is particularly relevant for historians. The fourth and last part covers
schools, traditions, and figures from the history of the philosophies of historiography
and history. True to the liberal broad scope of this companion, this part covers Darwin
as well as Ranke, phenomenology as well as logical-positivism, Marx as well as
Fukuyama.
This companion was conceived with philosophers as well as historians (of nature as
well as of humanity) in mind. The entries do not assume prior familiarity with their
topics. Students of philosophy and history would likewise find this Companion highly
accessible. I hope that this companion will be most useful for spurring research in the
philosophies of historiography and history. Each one of the entries and their bibliographies
can serve as a springboard for research, for pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge.
This is particularly true of the entries where authors interpreted sometimes
for the first time the implications of contemporary debated in philosophy in general,
epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of science for the philosophies of
historiography and history.