Historical Explanation Morton G. White Mind, New Series, Vol. 52, No. 207. (Jul., 1943), pp. 212-229. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423%28194307%292%3A52%3A207%3C212%3AHE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A Mind is currently published by Oxford University Press.
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http://www.jstor.org Wed Jun 6 08:04:16 2007
11.-HISTORICAL
EXPLANATION.
HISTORIANSand philosophers frequently speak of what they call historical explanations. Some explanations, they say, are physical, others chemical, and still others historical. In this paper I shall discuss several questions which arise in connection with the concept historical explanation. First I shall consider the view, which is widely held, that a historical explanation is 'one that involves a reference to the past in ;way that distinguishes it from all other kinds of explanations. But more concretely, the proposed analysis of the phrase " historical explanation " which I shall consider is the one according to which a historical explanation explains facts prevailing a t one timeoby reference to facts prevailing a t an earlier time.l I shall try to state this view as clearly as I can, and then try to show that it is enticing, but incorrect, because it prevents us from distinguishing many explanations which we call non-historical from historical explanations. In the remainder of the paper I shall try to show how the problem of analysing historical explanation is connected' with the general problem of analysing what it means to say that an explanation is of a certain kind. The paper does not present a definition of " historical explanation ", but in its attempt to clarify some problems preliminary to the presentation of such a definition, it may be regarded as an introduction to a logical analysis of history. 1
I
When one distinguishes a physical explanation from a biological explanation, or from a chemical explanation, one has a fixed meaning of the word " explanation " in mind. The physical, chemical, and biological explanations are all regarded as explanations in the same sense of that word. When one goes on to compare historical explanations with these other explanations, the presumption is that the word " explanation " has not shifted in meaning. All these explanations differ only in being different kinds of explanations. I stress what may seem to some very obvious only because I do think that it is possible that the word Thus, Prof. Hugh Miller in his History and Science (Berkeley, 1939) says : " a genetic science is one which understands the present in the light of the past " (p. 21).
explanation " when it appears in the phrase " historical explanation " means something different from what it means 'when it appears, say, in the phrase " physical explanation ". But, although I admit the logical possibility of the word being so ambiguously used, I admit no more than a logical possibility. For I think that an examination of the usage of historians and philosophers shows that when they speak of historical explanations, they do not use some other sense of the word "explanation". What other meaning might be reasonably attached to the word by an analyst of usage, I do not know, but I think it just as well to record this possibility, if only to make explicit one of my own assumptions. For purposes of the present paper I shall accept a brief analysis of scientific explanation recently presented by C. G. Hempel. Hempel says :
