Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Glossary of Terms
1 Introduction
Part I Major Fields
2 Philosophy of Historiography
Facts
Evidence
The Structure of Description and Justification
Explanation and Understanding
Summary
3 Philosophy of History
The Term “Philosophy of History”
The Terms “Philosophy” and “History”
Historiographical Production
Critical Theory of Historiography vs. Substantive Philosophy of History
The Meaning and Function of History
The Evolution of Substantive Philosophies of History
The Poetics of the Substantive Philosophy of History
The Arrival of the Philosophy of Historiography
4 Philosophical Issues in Natural History and Its Historiography
Introduction
The Scientific Method of Yore
The Structure and Research Practices of Scientific Historiography of Nature
Explanation and Confirmation in Scientific Historiography
Narrative Explanation
Common Cause Explanation
5 Historians and Philosophy of Historiography
JOHN ZAMMITO
A Perennial Crisis? When “Historiography” Faces “Philosophy”
The Poststructuralist/Postmodernist Challenge
Practicing Historians and the Challenge of Philosophy
Concluding Comment
Part II Basic Problems
6 Historiographic Evidence and Confirmation
What Is Historiographic Evidence?
Bayesianism
Bayesianism as a Model of Historiographic Reasoning
Explanationism
Towards an Explanationist Bayesianism
Applications: Skepticism
Applications: Underdetermination
7 Causation in Historiography
Unificationist Accounts of Causation
Conditional Theories
Counterfactuals
Causation as a Process
Probability
Exceptionalism
Eliminativism
Primitivism
8 Historiographic Counterfactuals
The Counterfactual Character of Historiography
Understanding
Metaphysical Preliminaries
Causal Counterfactual Analysis in Historiography
Counterfactuals and Practical Reasoning
Science and Counterfactuals
9 Historical Necessity and Contingency
Introduction
Necessity and Contingency as Degrees of Stability
Necessity (Contingency) and Description
Cleopatra’s Nose and Other Category Mistakes
Making a Difference
Emplotment
Prophets of Contingency
10 Explanation in Historiography
1
2
3
Acknowledgment
11 Historiographic Understanding GIUSEPPINA D’ORO
Introduction
The Argument for Methodological Unity
The Argument against Methodological Unity
Understanding Others
The Ontological Turn and the New Causalist Consensus
12 Colligation
The Concept of “Colligation”
Some Common Hazards in Colligation
Philosophical Issues
Colligation and Postmodernism
The Value of Colligation
13 The Laws of History
A Systematic Look at Laws in History and Nature
The History of the “Laws of History”
Current Problems and Debates in History and Neighboring Disciplines
14 Historiographic Objectivity
Objectivity and Methodology
Relativism and Beyond
Scientific Historiography
Approximating the Truth about History
Conclusion
15 Realism about the Past
Commonsense Realism
Representative Realism
Analytic Realism
Materialism
Anti-realism
16 Anti-realism about the Past
Realism vs. Anti-realism in the Semantics of Mathematical Language
Anti-realism about the Empirical Realm and, in Particular, about the Past
Historical Significance and Historical Insignificance
Generality and Holistic Explanations
The Objectivity of Historiography
Conclusion
17 Narrative and Interpretation
Introduction
Origins of the Contemporary Debate
Historiographic Research and Writing
Two Variants of Narrativist Philosophy of Historiography
The Philosophical Approach
The Transcendentalization of Narrativist Philosophy of Historiography
Rhetorical Narrativist Philosophy
Hayden White
Conclusion
18 The Ontology of the Objects of Historiography
Background
Methodological Individualism
Problems with Methodological Individualism
The Nature of Social Reality
Conclusion
Bibliography
19 Origins: Common Causes in Historiographic Reasoning
Some Common Cause vs. a Particular common Cause
Type vs. Token Common Cause
Information Preservation and the Inference of the Existence of Some Common Causes
The Meaning of the Existence of Some Common Cause
Likelihoods of the Variational Group given Common and Separate Causes
Alternative Common Cause Hypotheses
20 Phylogenetic Inference
Introduction
From Art to Science: An Introduction to Schools of Thought
How to Infer Phylogeny, Or, Why Some Cladists Aren’t “Cladists”
Summary and Synthesis
Acknowledgment
21 Historicism
Historiographic Concepts
Historical Laws
Historiographic Interpretations
Conclusion
22 Ethics and the Writing of Historiography
23 Logical Fallacies of Historians
Types of Fallacy
Logical Fallacies of Historians
Fallacies and Historians
24 Historical Fallacies of Historians
Philosophers’ fallacies and historians’ fallacies
Five Historical Fallacies
Historical Fallacies of Philosophers and the Relationship of Philosophy to its History
Part III Philosophy and Sub-fields of Historiography
25 Philosophy of History of Science
Introduction
Critical Narratives
Rival Reconstructions
Philosophical Problems
26 Philosophies of Historiography and the Social Sciences
An Intellectual Historiography
Why and When Historiography Needs Social Theory
Why and When Does Social Theory Needs Historiography?
Conclusion
27 The Philosophy of Evolutionary Theory
Progress and Evolution
Embryological Analogies
Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
After Darwin
The Twentieth Century
Growing Up
28 The Philosophy of Geology
Introduction
Identifying Unique Events
Representing Events
Unique Events and Explanation in Scientific Historiography
Illustration of Evidence and Events
Conclusion
29 Philosophy of Archaeology
The Interpretive Dilemma
Archaeology and Philosophy
Middle Range Theory
The Science of Archaeology
Where Do Hypotheses Come From?
Cognitive Archaeology and the Archaeology of Cognition
Darwinian and Biological Archaeology
Environmental Archaeology
Archaeology as Social Science
30 Reductionism: Historiography and Psychology
1
2
3
4
5
Acknowledgment
31 Historiography and Myth
Some Basic Definitions
Historiography and Myth in Ancient Greece
Mythical Historiography in Antiquity
Myth vs. Historiography
32 Historiography and Memory
33 Historiographic Schools
The Concept of “Schools”
Main Schools of Historiography
Towards a Theory of the History of Historiography
Part IV Classical Schools and Philosophers of Historiography and History
34 Leopold Ranke
Scientific Historiography
Substantive Assumptions
The Meaning of History
35 Scientific Historiography
Theory and Method in Historiography: Some Preliminary Distinctions
A Short History of the Historiographic Method
Critical Method and Its Discontents
The Comparative Method as the “Royal Road” to Scientific Historiography?
36 Darwin
Progress and the Tree of History
Discovering the Past
Teleological Thinking
37 Logical Empiricism and Logical Positivism
Logical Positivism: Basic Information
The Hempelian Model of Explanation in Historiography
Popperian Critique of Historicism
Conclusion
38 Jewish and Christian Philosophy of History
Biblical Foundations
Post-biblical Variations
Modern Legacies
39 Muslim Philosophy of History
Introduction
Muslim or Islamic Philosophy of History?
Islamic Concept of History
Development of Muslim Philosophy of History and Historiography
Two Muslim Philosophers of History: Ibn Miskawayh and Ibn Khaldun
Muslim Philosophy of History and Encounters with the West
Conclusion
40 Vico
Theological Convictions
Philosophical Assumptions
Philological Interpretations
Historiographical Implications
41 Kant and Herder
Kant’s Philosophy of History
Criticisms of Kant’s Philosophy of History
Herder’s Reflections and His Objections to Kant’s Philosophy of History
Criticisms of Herder’s Philosophy of History
42 Hegel
Hegel’s Interest in History and the French Revolution
Hegel and the Philosophy of History
Hegel and the History of Philosophy
Hegel’s Historical Approach to Knowledge
43 Neo-Kantianism
The Setting and Development of Neo-Kantian Thought
Windelband’s Division of the Sciences: Nomothetic and Idiographic
Heinrich Rickert’s Theory of Historical Knowledge
Cassirer’s Logic of the Cultural Sciences
44 Marx
On the Marxist Reading of Marx’s Philosophy of History
Marx’s Philosophy of History
Marx on History and Freedom
Marx’s Historical Approach to Cognition
45 Collingwood and Croce
Philosophical Context
Knowing History
The Content of History and Historiography
Conclusion
46 Phenomenology
Husserl’s Phenomenology
Phenomenology and History
Heidegger
Later Developments in Phenomenology
Prospects for a Phenomenological Philosophy of History
47 Jan Pato
ka
48 Hermeneutics
49 Postmodernism
Postmodernism’s Challenge
Responses to the Postmodern Challenge
Continuing Crisis of Incompatibilities
Conclusion
50 Philosophy of History at the End of the Cold War
The Recovery of the Philosophy of History
The End of History: Hegel Redivivus
The Clash of Civilizations: The Revenge of the Past?
Index
Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
This outstanding student reference series offers a comprehensive and authoritative survey of philosophy as a whole. Written by today's leading philosophers, each volume provides lucid and engaging coverage of the key figures, terms, topics, and problems of the field. Taken together, the volumes provide the ideal basis for course use, representing an unparalleled work of reference for students and specialists alike.
Already published in the series:
1. The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Second Edition
Edited by Nicholas Bunnin and Eric Tsui-James
2. A Companion to Ethics
Edited by Peter Singer
3. A Companion to Aesthetics
Edited David Cooper
4. A Companion to Epistemology
Edited by Jonathan Dancy and Ernest Sosa
5. A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy (two-volume set), Second Edition
Edited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit
6. A Companion to Philosophy of Mind
Edited by Samuel Guttenplan
7. A Companion to Metaphysics
Edited by Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa
8. A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory
Edited by Dennis Patterson
9. A Companion to Philosophy of Religion
Edited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro
10. A Companion to the Philosophy of Language
Edited by Bob Hale and Crispin Wright
11. A Companion to World Philosophies
Edited by Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe
12. A Companion to Continental Philosophy
Edited by Simon Critchley and William Schroeder
13. A Companion to Feminist Philosophy
Edited by Alison M. Jaggar and Iris Marion Young
14. A Companion to Cognitive Science
Edited by William Bechtel and George Graham
15. A Companion to Bioethics
Edited by Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer
16. A Companion to the Philosophers
Edited by Robert L. Arrington
17. A Companion to Business Ethics
Edited by Robert E. Frederick
18. A Companion to the Philosophy of Science
Edited by W. H. Newton-Smith
19. A Companion to Environmental Philosophy
Edited by Dale Jamieson
20. A Companion to Analytic Philosophy
Edited by A. P. Martinich and David Sosa
21. A Companion to Genethics
Edited by Justine Burley and John Harris
22. A Companion to Philosophical Logic
Edited by Dale Jacquette
23. A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy
Edited by Steven Nadler
24. A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages
Edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone
25. A Companion to African-American Philosophy
Edited by Tommy L. Lott and John P. Pittman
26. A Companion to Applied Ethics
Edited by R. G. Frey and Christopher Heath Wellman
27. A Companion to the Philosophy of Education
Edited by Randall Curren
28. A Companion to African Philosophy
Edited by Kwasi Wiredu
29. A Companion to Heidegger
Edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall
30. A Companion to Rationalism
Edited by Alan Nelson
31. A Companion to Ancient Philosophy
Edited by Mary Louise Gill and Pierre Pellegrin
32. A Companion to Pragmatism
Edited by John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis
33. A Companion to Nietzsche
Edited by Keith Ansell Pearson
34. A Companion to Socrates
Edited by Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar
35. A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism
Edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall
36. A Companion to Kant
Edited by Graham Bird
37. A Companion to Plato
Edited by Hugh H. Benson
38. A Companion to Descartes
Edited by Janet Broughton and John Carriero
39. A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology
Edited by Sahotra Sarkar and Anya Plutynski
40. A Companion to Hume
Edited by Elizabeth S. Radcliffe
41. A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography
Edited by Aviezer Tucker
Forthcoming
42. A Companion to Aristotle
Edited by Georgios Anagnostopoulos
Also under contract:
A Companion to Philosophy of Literature, Edited by Jost and Hagberg
A Companion to Schopenhauer, Edited by Bart Vandenabeele
A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology, Edited by Jan-Kyrre Berg Olsen, Stig Andur Pedersen and Vincent F. Hendricks
This edition first published 2009
© 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell's publishing program has been merged with Wiley's global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.
Registered office
John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom
Editorial Offices
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148–5020, USA
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK
The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.
The right of Aviezer Tucker to be identified as the author of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to the philosophy of history and historiography / edited by Aviezer Tucker.
p. cm. – (Blackwell companions to philosophy ; 41)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-4908-2 (hbk. : alk. paper)
1. Historiography–Philosophy. 2. History–Philosophy. I. Tucker, Aviezer, 1965–
D13.C627 2008
907.2–dc22
2008007601
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
01 2009
Contributors
Zaid Ahmad, Universiti Putra, Malaysia
Sharon Anderson-Gold, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
F. R. Ankersmit, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Charles Bambach, University of Dallas, Texas
Yemima Ben-Menahem, Hebrew University
Stephan Berry, Berlin
Krzysztof Brzechczyn, Adam Mickiewitz University/Institute of National Remembrance, Poland
Ivan Chvatik, Czech Academy of Science
Carol E. Cleland, University of Colorado, Boulder
Robert D'Amico, University of Florida
Mark Day, Nottingham–Trent University
Giuseppina D'Oro, Keele University
Thomas Gil, Technical University of Berlin
Jonathan Gorman, Queen's University, Belfast
Matt Haber, University of Utah
Stein Helgeby, Melbourne, Australia
Rob Inkpen, University of Portsmouth
Nicholas Jardine, University of Cambridge
Ben Jeffares, Australia National University
Harold Kincaid, University of Alabama, Birmingham
Colin G. King, Humboldt University of Berlin
Peter Kosso, Northern Arizona University
Krishnan Kumar, University of Virginia
Claire Lavabre, CNRS, France
Mary Lefkowitz, Wellesley College
Christopher Lloyd, University of New England
Chris Lorenz, VU University of Amsterdam
Cynthia Macdonald, Queen's University, Belfast
Graham Macdonald, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Rudolf A. Makkreel, Emory University
Joseph Mali, Tel Aviv University, Israel
C. Behan McCullagh, La Trobe University
Samuel Moyn, Columbia University
Murray Murphey, University of Pennsylvania
Paul Newall, British Royal Navy
Fabrice Pataut, Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques, Paris
Gregory Radick, University of Leeds
Tom Rockmore, Duquesne University
Michael Ruse, Florida State University
Beverley Southgate, University of Hertfordshire
Carlos Spoerhase, Humboldt University of Berlin
Aviezer Tucker, Prague
Lars Udehn, Stockholm University
Zden
k Vašíek, Institute for Contemporary History, Prague
David Weberman, Central European University, Hungary
Elazar Weinryb, Open University of Israel
John S. Wilkins, University of Queensland, Australia
John Zammito, Rice University
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank first and foremost the contributors to this Companion. This excellent group of scholars, from four continents, are typical of the heterogeneity, sophistication, and charm of philosophers of historiography and history. In addition to being at the top of their respective philosophic fields, the authors make significant contributions to a dozen different academic areas, as well as excelling in other activities; in addition to academics, the contributors include novelists, a naval officer, independent scholars, and former dissidents. As the opera is only truly over when the fat lady sings, a Companion is complete only when the last contributor hands in the final essay. Therefore, I wish to thank, in particular, those contributors who obligingly stepped in at short notice to fill in and author a second entry, when that slot became unexpectedly vacant, so that we were able to complete the Companion in a timely fashion: Paul Newall, Tom Rockmore, and especially, Graham Macdonald. I can hardly imagine what they must have had to go through! I should like to thank Jeff Dean, the philosophy editor at Blackwell, for working with me on this project for the last three years, since I proposed the Companion while I was an Australia Research Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra. At the ANU I was inspired by Robert Goodin, who co-edited Blackwell's Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, and with whom I conducted research there. I did most of the editorial work while I was working at Queen's University, Belfast. I benefited from the steady support of Jonathan Gorman, who also contributed an entry to this companion. Graeme Leonard meticulously copy-edited the volume.
This Companion has lived with me for three years and has thus become quite a member of the family. As it is about to mature, leave home, and hopefully carve a niche for itself on the shelves of the big wide world out there, it makes room for yet another companion to join myself and my companion for life, Veronika, who has stood by me through each one of my books, knowing it would never be the last. As for that other life-long companion, in the words of a poet of my generation:
Still in the earliest days of history When the world existed only in theory . . .
Aviezer Tucker,
Bangor, Co. Down,
April 2008
Glossary of Terms
Historians People who write about past events. For example, Leopold Ranke.
Historical Of past events. For example, Latin was the historical language of the Romans.
Historiographers People who write about the history of historiography. For example, Georg Iggers.
Historiographic Of historiography, of written accounts of past events. For example, the theoretical assumptions historians make.
Historiographic narrative The final result of historiographic research written in narrative form. For example, textbooks.
Historiographic research The professional activities of historians. For example, searching the archives.
Historiography What historians write, about past events, about history. For example, Leopold Ranke's History of the Popes.
History Past events, processes, etc. For example, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
Natural historians or historians of nature People who write about natural history. For example, Stephen J. Gould.
Natural historiography or historiography of nature Writings about natural history by natural historians. For example, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.
Natural history The history of non-humans. For example, the universe, planet earth, the species.
Philosophy of historiography The philosophical examination, study, and theorizing about historiography, about what historians write, and its relation to the evidence, the epistemology of historiography, the ontology of historiographic concepts, etc.
Philosophy of history Philosophical examination, study, and theorizing about the past, including substantial/speculative philosophy of history but also issues like contingency and necessity in history. For example, Hegel's Philosophy of History.
Scientific historiography Historiography that offers scientific-grade probable beliefs about history.
1
Introduction
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 ofGeschichtsschreibung. 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 non-human 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. Quota-tions 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 up-to-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 know-ledge. 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. The philosophies of historiography and history are still very much a philosophical terra incognita for research. I am certain that many of the seeds of successful programs of research can be found throughout this companion.
The significance and importance of the philosophies of historiography and history for philosophy and historiography cannot be overestimated. At the very least, the philosophy of historiography may assist historians and philosophers in avoiding making common mistakes. Historians, who read the entries in this companion, should be able to avoid logical fallacies, confirm better their hypotheses using evidence, have a firmer grasp of the nature of causation and explanation in historiography, and be aware of possible uses of counterfactuals. In other words, historians could improve their methods, inferences, and assumption by becoming aware of best historiographic practice elucidated philosophically. Conversely, philosophers could benefit from avoiding false generalizations and anachronisms by understanding the nature of history and historiography. Philosophers who have been quite innocent of historiography and history have been making patently false generalizations about causation, explanation, counterfactuals, laws, science, understanding, necessity and contingency, and so on that could have been avoided had they taken them into account
We live in a civilization that too often either ignores the past, or takes it for granted. Either way, the result is temporal provincialism, the assumption that the past looked pretty much like the present and so has nothing to teach us. Philosophers who are embedded in this culture compound ignoring the past in favor of false universal statements that are founded on a belief in the eternity of the present, with taking the past for granted, ignoring the epistemic issues involved in our knowledge of the past. Even when philosophers do read historiography and attempt to consider its philosophically relevant results, they too often take it for granted, almost as if it offered pure observation sentences of the past, unmarred by varying degrees of reliability, underdetermination, value ladenness, and narrative construction. Conversely, some philosophers dismiss historiography altogether as a source of knowledge, believing somehow that the only proper science for philosophers to study is physics, which of course has no history... Such presumptions can only be based on ignorance of the epistemology of historiography and the history of physics. This companion would fulfil its proper role if it awakens both groups from their dogmatic slumber.
Part I
Major Fields