Abstract
The approach that I am taking in this book asks abstract questions about historical processes and historical knowledge, but it does not derive from existing research traditions of the traditional philosophy of history. Instead, it takes its inspiration from the philosophy of the special sciences. I take the view that historians are attempting to make sense of the past in ways that can be supported by the evidence of the present.
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Notes
- 1.
There is quite a bit of reflective work underway on the scientific foundations of relevant areas of the social sciences, in which practitioners of international relations theory, comparative politics, and globalization are rethinking the nature of scientific study of these forms of social processes. Particularly valuable are Lebow and Lichbach (2007), Elman and Elman (2003), Geddes (2003), and George and Bennett (2005).
- 2.
William Sewell is another good example of an historian who makes a strong contribution to the philosophy of history. His Logics of History (Sewell, 2005) offers a singular contribution to historiography, with careful, analytical attention to some of the problematic constructs and frameworks that underlie the ways in which scholars attempt to characterize and explain historical change.
- 3.
The issue of causal analysis across levels of social and historical organization has received attention in recent years. Goertz and Mahoney focus attention on the importance of identifying the levels of analysis and discovering the causal relations that exist within and across levels (Goertz and Mahoney, 2005).
- 4.
Carole Fink’s biography is an outstanding treatment of his thought and life (Fink, 1989); also important is Marc Bloch, l’historien et la cite (Deyon et al., 1997). Susan Friedman (Friedman, 1996) provides an excellent intellectual history of Bloch’s development.
- 5.
Bloch’s early ideas about comparative history are presented in his 1928 article, “Toward a Comparative History of European Societies,” (Bloch, 1953); see also William Sewell, “Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History” (Sewell, 1967).
- 6.
If there is a unifying theme to the philosophy of history in the past 15 years, it is the “linguistic turn” represented by Frank Ankersmit and others: the idea that narrative is the key distinguishing form of historical representation, and that the rhetorical and linguistic features of narrative should play a key role in the philosophy of history (Ankersmit and Kellner, 1995). On this approach, we should attempt to understand historians’ writings in something like the way that we analyze literature. The approach taken in this book is one that is closer to the social sciences; my approach emphasizes the cognitive and semantic content of historical knowledge. The key issues are to be able to provide good interpretations of the causal analysis of social processes and empirically supportable interpretations of historical actors that play central roles in historical explanation.
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Little, D. (2010). History and Narrative. In: New Contributions to the Philosophy of History. Methodos Series, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9410-0_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9410-0_2
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