On Explanations in History Arthur C. Danto Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23, No. 1. (Jan., 1956), pp. 15-30. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8248%28195601%2923%3A1%3C15%3AOEIH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6 Philosophy of Science is currently published by The University of Chicago Press.
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ON EXPLANATIONS I N HISTORY * ARTHVR C. DAYTO
Whether or not history is, or could be, or ought to be a science, depends in part upon how the words "science" and "history" are to be used. But if one of the criteria of a science is an ability to provide explanations of large numbers of events by means of a small number of general laws, it then becomes in part a question of whether or not history does, or can, provide explanations of this sort for the phenomena which concern it. It is common knowledge that history, a t the present time, displays no obvious instance of such an explanation; and I shall try to argue that, though the phenomena with which history deals cozlld conceivably be explained in a "scientific" manner, it is not the ofice of history to provide such explanations, nor does its lack of explanations in any way diminish either the effectiveness or importance of history. So if my conclusions here suggest that history is not a science, and could not be one, they also suggest that it ought not to be one, but that it is a special and irreducible activity of the human spirit, with a function and justification of its own.
It is quite generally supposed, by those a t least who cleave to the empiricist tradition in philosophy, that a creditable explanation, which purports to have empirical reference, must contain some general law or law-like statement; and that we cannot really claim to have explained any phenomenon whatsoever, until we have shown that it falls within the legitimate scope of some general law when the latter is suitably specialized, and the former adequately described. When we have brought together in this way a phenomenon-to-be-explained and a law, our accomplishment is tmo-fold: we have a t least partially explained the phenomenon, and a t least partially confirmed the law. To be sure, the actual activity which we call "explaining"-the way people behave when they offer explanations-does not always, or even often, involve explicit mention of the appropriate general law; and frequently, a t least in ordinary life, we feel that we have given a satisfactory and perfectly comprehensible explanation of something if we merely relate it to something else (which we assume t o stand in causal relationship with it) by means of a 'because-statement': 'z happened because of y', where no law is invoked a t all. Yet neither he who makes the statement, nor he to whom it is extended by way of explanation, would accept the 'because-statement' so casually, were it not recognized, on either hand, that z and y belong together with reference to some general law which, though it may go unstated, is nonetheless binding, or felt to be binding, by all parties concerned. So, when I say "I shiver because I am cold," I expect to be, and usually am, understood without my ever being called upon to make explicit the covert law upon which
* I an1 indebted to Dr. Joseph Turner, Prof. Benjamin Nelson, and Mr. Richard Arendt for critical and stylistic suggestions. But I alone am responsible for such extravagances and misconceptions as this paper may contain. 15
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my 'explanation' depends. Gnless someone challenges my statement, or disagrees with my diagnosis, or is simply so constituted thermostatically that my statement fails to make sense to him, I am usually content to suppress the major premises of my explanations, and to make myself clear with enthymemes. A fair amount of energy is thus conserved, but the point is, I can often, and do sometimes, cover my 'because-statements' with qualifying generalizations, and so bring my explanations to satisfactory closure. As cases become more complex, and phenomena more recondite than common experience is wont to ponder, 'because-statements7 tend to be less and less satisfactory; and if I do, in the context of science, put forward such a statement, the y position in l.2: because of y' is apt to take its filling from notions abstract enough to begin with, and already refined by laws. In the statement "A ray of light bends towards the normal in a certain medium because the index of density of the medium of origination is smaller than that of the medium of passage," the notion of 'because7 is somex3-hat gratuitous, for the phenomenon happens to be covered by a known general lam which merely requires that we furnish values for its variables in order to deduce a sentence describing the situation a t hand. Generally in science, such laws, together with specifications of initial conditions, constitute the minimal equipment for a successful explanation. And thus, whether laws are discovered through diligence, luck, or ingenuity, as in science, or whether as in ordinary life they are spontaneously acquired, like language and dietary prejudices, as part of our cultural dowry, explanations seem indifferently to require laws in all cases and contexts. It is in terms of explanation, so construed, that the problem of historical explanation-the problem, that is, of rendering intelligible those events which have characteristically concerned historians-is typically approached. But revolutions and \3?ars, the unique destinies of great men and women, the sudden flourishing of high artistic styles and the epochs of high intellectual achievement, the rise and fall of nations-all these and more, of which we read with such fascination in history books, have heretofore seemed singularly unamenable to explanation in the fullest sense. Often, historians have been able, with considerable inventiveness, to provide 'because-statements,' showing that certain events took place because of certain other antecedent events. And these 'because-statements' have often been vigorously debated, modified, strengthened, or dismissed; but seldom, if ever, have the general laws implicit in these 'explanations' been made explicit in any convincing way, nor (to my knowledge) have any acceptable laws been articulated which cover a significantly large number of occurrences. Of course, many of the events of historical concern are, in whole or in part, instances covered by some known law, but generally such laws are deemed irrelevant to the matter a t hand: whatever laws there are in neurophysiology must have applied to Goya as well as to the next man, but to explain a piece of Goya's artistic behavior in terms of the switch-like nature of the nervous impulse or in terms of the circuit action of the nervous system, is apparently to miss the historically interesting points about Goya. At the same time, the past seems a vast repository of counterinstances, so that when one generates a law to cover a particular event, it is
ON EXPLANATIONS
IN HISTORY
17
immediately exposed to a defeating battery of counter-instances; and by time the 'law' is qualified and hedged-in with special conditions, it appears to cover no more than the instance it was generated to explain-at which point its status a s a law becomes suspect. For any law, whose acceptance depends upon the determination of a particular non-random instance, is a suspect law, not because a law may be "independent of all determinations of instances," as Nelson Goodman has put it,' "but only that there is no particular instance on the determination of which acceptance depends." And I need not speak here of the vagueness and inelegance of most "laws of history" which philosophies of history, however empirically ramified they may be, have exhibited. It is not surprising, then, in view of the enormous amount of data a t the historian's command, together with the paucity of explicit laws which could structure this data theoretically, that a number of students of the subject should feel that the appropriate laws will never be discovered-not because of any special limits of human understanding, not because the laws lie too deep for discovery, but because, they feel, the order of fact with which history deals is on an ontological plane where such laws simply do not apply. On this ontological plane so the argument runs, the methods of the natural sciences are peculiarly illsuited to the achievement of knowledge. Instead, we must regard historical events in terms of unique genetic sequence^,^ each calling for a type of subjective understanding (Verstehen) and none susceptible to general theorizing; for what one such event or sequence may have in common with any other is just what is unimportant for the understanding of either. We must, as one representative of this position has stated, "interpret experience on the level of experience,gn which seemingly is what scientific analysis does not do. This view, which has its prima facie plausibility, has been subjected to vigorous attack in recent years, both on the level of ontology and of method. (1) Criticisms of the position often undertake to show that the ontological peculiarities, which are claimed to defy natural-science treatment and which are deemed essential to the subject-matter of historical inquiry, are in fact not peculiar to such subject-matter, and that they, or their analogs, are to be found in areas which have been successfully invaded by natural-science techniques. There are many examples of such criticism and I cannot consider them all. (a) When it is argued that each historical event is unique and non-recurrent, it is countered that every event is in some sense unique and that no event is recurrent, for no two events belong to all the same classes, and any two otherwise similar events a t least take place a t different times or in different positions. (b) Sometimes it is argued that, in order to understand the behavior of any human actor in any situation S, it is necessary to take into consideration prior states of the actor's career, for 1 Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1955), p. 28. Talcott Parsons, introduction to Max Weber's T h e Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York; Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 8 ff. 3 R . M. MacIver, Society (New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1931), p. 530. Cited by Nagel. See note 15.
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variant pasts will produce variant actions under relatively invariant circumstances. But this ~ i ~ ibe l l countered with analogous cases in natural science, such as elastic fatigue or magnetic hysteresk4 (c) And when freedom of the spirit is put forward, it is countered with the ~ i ~ h oprogram le of cultural determinism, psychological conditioning, certain uncanny resemblances between electronic machines and the human nervous system, etc. Now these rebuttals have only relative strengths. (c), for example, does not make dualism any less probable, and the identical evidence has not prevented scientists like Eddington, Sherrington, Adrian, and Eccles from dra~i~ing the dualist inference. Arguments like (b) only defeat certain predicates which someone happens to think definitory of historical events; but it does not entail that there is no such predicate, nor does an overlapping predicate entail the conclusion that social action and magnetic hysteresis can be treated by the same, or even analogous laws. Indeed, such arguments can cut two ways, and if we can imagine a society where history were held in vastly higher esteem than physics, then such an overlapping predicate might encourage the view that physics is really vulnerable to historical treatment, and that time and application will make of it a full-fledged historical discipline, or at least a contender for the accolade. But the point is, it seems to me, that whether the world is all of a piece or not, this has nothing to do with whether or not science can profitably be applied to any part of the world. For science, it seems to me, is neutral ~ i ~ i respect to ontological strata, and who is to say on th a priori grounds, that science may go so far and no further? And who could honestly claim that when a phenomenon is explained in terms of the predicates of a given science, as when heat is explained in terms of the mechanical behavior of molecules in random motion, that the phenomenon is henceforth abolished from reality? Rather, the world's stock of kinds of phenomena remains constant with respect to scientific theories, and theories by themselves can neither add to nor subtract from that stock. I might call this the First Law of the Conservation of Phenomena, and urge it on dualists and their opponents alike. The mistake, on either hand, is to rest a methodological issue on ontological ground^.^ (2) Methodologically, the critics of Verstehen have pointed out (and I think correctly), that no really convincing argument has been put forward which would indicate the impossibility of extending the ordinary patterns of causal explanation into the deepest reaches of the spiritual domain. Verstehen, they have suggested, may indeed provide hypotheses and insights and programs for further research, but its very subjectiveness disqualifies it as an alternative to the accepted methods of explanation, in terms of laws and initial conditions, and of confirmation, in terms of public accessibility and impersonal test. Meanwhile, subjective understanding has provided hypotheses, and the laws essential to the C. G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, "The Logic of Explanation," reprinted in Feigl and Brodbeck, Readings i n The Philosophy of Science (New P o r k ; Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1953), p. 327. This is one way of interpreting Spinoza's famous argument: "What the body can do no one has hitherto determined, that is to say, experience has taught no one hitherto what the body, without being determined by the mind, can do and what i t cannot do from the laws of nature alone, insofar as nature is considered merely as corporeal . ." Ethics, P a r t 111, prop. ii, scholium.
.
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natural-science approach have not been forthcoming. So if the conflict between Verstehen and its adversaries continues to arouse a certain partisanship, unlike, say, the older but somewhat similar controversy between mechanism and vitalism in biology, it is, I think, precisely because Verstehen does seem to characterize the actual approach of many historiai~sand has suggested a number of fruitful hypotheses, while vitalism has proven rather barren in provoking positive lines of empirical pursuit. And while mechanism in biology has triumphed in a certain sense, historical mechanism (using the term loosely and non-invidiously), despite its philosophical attractiveness, has been until now difficult to implement as a definite program of historical analysis. But in spite of these pragmatic considerations, I do not think the Verstehen position altogether correct, and I shall, later in this paper, try to show why. On the other hand, I can give but partial assent to the mechanists. I concur in their belief that there is no reason why historical events must remain obdurate to scientific explanation. But I do not think that this has anything to do with the practice of history. I shall not, like those who opt for the autonomy of the Geisteswissenschaften, rest my case on ontological ground, for I judge ontology to be irrelevant here. Rather, I shall argue that our experience is cast in a certain way, that this cast of experience calls forth a certain interest in the types of happenings with which history deals and that this interest is such that explanation in terms of invariant principles misses the point. That is to say, even if the very facts which historical interest singled out were to be explained scientifically, history as we know it would be relatively unscathed. For history answers a need which science does not. Part of the reason why the problem of historical explanation has been a source of anguish to historians and philosophers alike is due, I think, to a mistaken notion that history is a struggling science, that its narrative methods are faute de mieux substitutes for law-like explanations, that historians are laggards in a world gone scientific and that their discipline is thus an anachronism in the contemporary scene. I feel that it is no more a struggling science than, say, love and no more of an anachronism. And thus I return to the problem of how the words "history" and "science" are used.
I would not define a science by the objects which it studies, for all objects are fair prey for scientific analysis. Nor would I define a science by the methods it employs, for the prey may be flushed in an indefinite number of ways. I would only say that that is not a science, the statements of which do not approximate to the ideals of generality, precision, and consistency. At the very least, a science is a body of st,atements, systematically elaborated, of unrestricted generality, which makes reference to no particular phenomena unless the statements are specified by suitable maneuvers. Some terms, and some statements, function primitively in such a system, and are justified by their facilitating the derivation of further statements by rather formal means. By stipulating certain extensional definitions for the terms of the system, by substituting values for the variables of the system, we bring it into some rapprochement with the world; and by thus rendering the system more or less descriptive, we render the world more or less
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intelligible. Such a system not only comes to provide explanations for certain states of the world, but serves to make predictions of various states of the world when these are adequately described, and when the description can be shown to follow, in a logical way, from specifications of certain initial conditions and from certain law-like sentences of the science. Now we can make any number of true, and even rather precise statements about the world without being scientists; and we can even use any number of general laws in our inquiries without these inquiries thereby becoming constituted as sciences. The systematic character of a science is crucial, and it is for this reason, I think, that history, though it aims at making true statements about the world, and often comes by its truths through the instrumental employment of general laws, is not, save perhaps in a commendatory sense, a duly constituted science. For the laws it uses as instruments are not necessarily explanatory laws, and the explanatory lams it may use do not usually belong to it. Every science may, a t times, "borrow" laws and explanatory concepts from other sciences (as most sciences borrow from mathematics); but always a science has laws of its own, and history has none. Let me clarify this by dwelling for a moment on 'scientific' historiography socalled. History has come a long way since Descartes rejected its reliability by claiming that "even the most accurate of histories, if they do not exactly misrepresent or exaggerate the values of things in order to render them more worthy of being read, a t least omit in them all the circumstances which are basest and least noble."= Down the intervening ages, historians have taken upon themselves a commitment to truth, have relegated style to a secondary virtue, and have not merely foresworn moralistic intentions, but have tried to divest themselves, as much as possible, from their normative pre-occupations. The true statement about the past has become the end, aim, and ornament of the historical endeavor; and in its enterprises, history has enlisted the aid of any number of sciences: mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, physics, psychology, and others. And it has mastered the use of all manner of specialized paraphernalia: x-ray, microscopes, geiger-counters, and even high-speed electronic computers? All this has I t appears that there were good grounds for Descartes' denunciation. For the historians of his time were generally less concerned t o seek and state the truth than to construct elegantly turned narratives which were t o rival popular romances. At the same time they regarded history as a means of moral edification, and the past as a warehouse of paradigms. As one of them stated, "It were better to employ one's time in composition, and in arranging the facts of history than t o search for them; i t were also better too to think of the beauty and strength, the clearness and concision of style, than t o appear infallible in everything one writes." Quoted by Paul Hazard, in La Crise de la conscience europe'enne (Paris; Boivin, 1935), p. 32. Hazard has listed a number of examples of such factual insouciance. For example, there are 4,600 known manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. None are originals, none are copies of originals, all are copies of copies. Which of these best represent the originals? I n four chapters of the St. Luke Gospel, as it is written down in 311 of the manuscripts, there were found a t least 2000 places where the texts differed. By assigning numerical values t o these variations, information may be taped into the machines which will ultimately sort the errors into groups, and t,hus enable all copies of the same copy t o be grouped. New York T i m e s , August 8 , 1954.
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not only enabled historians to make increasingly precise statements about parts of the past, but has provided means for making statements where none could be made before. Yet, to Jind out what happened by using scientific instrumentalities, and to explain what happened by means of scientific laws, are fairly distinct things. To have grounds for asserting that something is the case, is not the same thing as having grounds for explaining why it happens to be the case. There is all the difference in the world between using a science, and being a science. Let me therefore distinguish the laws we might use to find out if something is the case from the laws we might use to explain why something happens to be the case, calling t& first type Instrumental Laws and the other Explanatory Laws. To be sure, the identical law may serve both functions in the same or different contexts: Kepler's laws function instrumentally in finding the position of a planet a t a given moment, and also explain (or enter into the explanation of) the planet's happening to be there a t that time. On the other hand, a law of dating based, say, on tree-rings, might give us precise information as to when a particular tribe abandoned a certain area, but might not enter, in any obvious way, into the explanation of why the tribe migrated. I n this context, such a law would be instrumental but not explanatory. Now scientific historiography employs a great number of instrumental laws effectively, some taken from the sciences, some its own, as for example "If the charter is written on paper, then it is not from the twelfth c e n t ~ r y . "But ~ it is my position that historians do not have a t their disposal any explanatory laws which enable them to deduce descriptions of the events which concern them from specified antecedent conditions; that such explanatory laws as they may invoke are taken from some discipline other than their own (usually a science); and that historians do not need any laws other than instrumental ones in order to make their points. I shall try to suggest that the "explanatory model" used in history is different from the "explanatory model" used in science, specifically in the sense that the former requires no explanatory laws. I am further convinced that, even if explanatory laws were discovered for the identical phenomena that concern historians, this would not eliminate nor replace historical explanations. Part of the reason for this is that historians pose different questions of their subject-matter than other inquirers do, and accordingly require different ans w e r ~ so , ~ that to provide an answer to a scientific question asked of a certain phenomenon is not automatically to provide an answer to an historical question asked of it. But part of the reason can best be made clear by considering the problem in the light of some remarks made by C. G. Hempel in a well-known paper, "The Function of General Laws in History."lo It is Hempel's contention that the pattern of scientific explanation can, in 8Marc Bloch, Re;lEections on the Historian's Craft (New York; Knopf, 1953), p. 113. 9 See my article "On Historical Questioning," Journal of Philosophy, L , 3 . February, 1954. ' 0 I n The Journal of Philosophy, 39, 1942. Reprinted in Feigl and Sellars, Readings i n Philosophical Analysis (New York; Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949), pp. 459-471.
principle, be employed in historical analysis, that general laws are indispensable for such explanation in the sense that an 'explanation' which fails to make explicit the general law or laws which connect the event in question to its antecedent conditions is incomplete. Konetheless, he recognizes that it is rare for any such law to be stated in a piece of historical writing, although he is convinced that some such law is frequently implicit in "many an explanation offered in history." But since these laws, whether causal or probabilistic, are "not clearly indicated, and cannot unambiguously be supplemented," Hempel suggests that: What explanatory analyses of historical events offer, then, is in most cases not an explanation . . . but something t h a t might be called an e x p l a n u f i o n sketch. Such a sketch consists of a more or less vague indication of the laws and initial conditions considered as relevant, and i t needs 'filling out' in order t o turn i t into a complete explanation. This filling out reyuires further empirical research, for which the sketch suggests the direction.11
Hempel's thesis is persuasive, especially since he is really only arguing that it is 'in principle' possible to make such explanations in history. I agree with the 'in principle' qualification, but I cannot fully accept the remainder of his thesis for a number of reasons. (1) Suppose someone, rightly or wrongly, explains the emergence of a new political party in America in the 1850's by citing, as a determining condition, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Such an historian obviously assumes that there is some causal connection between the two happenings, but does not make (and probably cannot make) explicit the general law which, if Hempel is correct, would complete the explanation. Now, even though the explanation is, in this sense, 'incomplete,' it is still capable of empirical test: it can be strengthened, weakened, and even dismissed without any explicit law's being used a t all-or a t least no explanatory law. I t can he discussed, explored, and tested strictly in terms of instrumental laws, via., "If there is hostility to Congressional decisions, it must be made manifest a t the poll^."^^ Such an instrumental law would guide inquiry in the direction of voting statistics, partisan newspaper editorials, party platforms, and the like. And this kind of investigation may lead to the conclusion that it was probably not the Kansas-Nebraska Act which affected the American party-structure, but, (say), a shift in social strata due to a heavy influx of immigrants, concentrations of foreign-born in areas with stabilized voting patterns, resentments of a purely local nature, religious animosities, etc. Indeed, it is possible that wide concert as to the causes of the event could be reached, competing hypotheses arbitrated, certain conditions accepted as determinant, without an explanatory law's being discovered or cited or required. The answer to an historical question can be provided by the use of instrumental laws, and usually is so provided. Something else is required, of course, but this 'something else' is not an explanatory law, as I shall suggest. L o c , cit., 465. Lee Benson, A n Operational A p p r o a c h to Historiography, mimeographed, Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbla University, 1955. l1
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(2) When we say that an explanation in history is a 'sketch', we may mean that what we have is but a partially limned outline, later t o be filled in. Or we may wish to emphasize that such explanations are, and always have been, states in a continuing process of inquiry which is by its very nature "open-ended." &lost of us myould admit that empirical statements are grounded in contingency, that they admit probability values of less than 1, and that any set of facts may be theoretically restructured in an indefinitely large number of configurations, limited only by some criterion of economy and some intuition of fittingness. In these senses, and in the sense that an account of the past is always subject to enlightened modification, our accounts are '(sketches" or "unfinished works". But this is obviously not altogether what Hempel has in mind. For even if we had established beyond question of doubt that some event happened because of some other (imagine even that we were 'absolutely certain') he would say that our statements were incomplete until we stated the connecting law. And of this I am not a t all sure. I have elsewhere contended13that stories play an important cognitive role in historical inquiry, that a story is an hypothetical recounting of what happened in a more or less determinate stretch of the past, that a story seeks to describe which events "led to" which other events, and finally, that whatever story we may construct over a stretch of the past, the story must be supported, a t critical points, by factual traces. I n a sense, such a story is a loosely articulated "model" of what happened, designating a deployment of events; and insofar as the historian's commitment is to truth, his aim is to draw the model to scale, as it were, so that it reproduces, by some criterion of resemblance, the structure in the past it purports to designate. Such a story must satisfy a t least two conditions: (1) it must account for all the known relevant traces, or a t least be consistent with them. But since an indefinite number of stories may be consistent with the same set of traces but a t the same time be inconsistent with one another, there is the further condition (2) that the model must suggest further research, so that the positive or negative outcome of such research will tend either to confirm or disconfirm the model. Should such further research unearth a contravening trace, then condition (1) is no longer satisfied, for the model no longer accounts for all the known relevant traces. Should there be two competing models, and the lines of query suggested by each fail to reveal any contravening trace, however indefinitely they may be prolonged, then it is l 3 I think t h a t there are many very large problems raised by the notion of stories, and I am not completely satisfied with t h e characterization I have given of them either here or elsewhere. For one thing, t h e earlier statements of a story prepare us for the later ones, and in a sense generate the "laws" by virtue of which we come t o accept the later statements as having been explained. And this, I think, raises issues of both a logical and an aesthetic kind. I am willing t o consider a story (which purports t o be true) as a rather large and complex proposition t o be tested in toto. Goodman has recently suggested t h a t "to seek truth is t o see a true system." "Axiomatic Measurement of Simplicity," Journal of Philosophy, LII, 24, p . 709. I am not sure whether a story can be construed as a system of any sort, but I think I would vary this utterance by saying that, in history, t o seek truth is t o seek a true story. I shall hope to exhibit the propriety of this notion in a forthcoming article, "Narrative Structures and True Stories."
impossible to reject one or embrace the other by any appeal to evidence.14Now any such model is incomplete in two senses: (a) are can never hope to report on every least detail of any stretch of the past, however restricted, so that any story can always be fleshed out with data not yet available, and (b) since a story is an hypothesis, it is always capable of further test. Obviously (a) and (b) are not independent. But is there a further sense (c), namely that a model of this sort is incomplete until the laws by virtue of which one event is said to 'lead to' another can be discovered and cited? Let us take a concrete case. Pirenne surmised that the shift from the Mediterranean to the Rhine of the political center of the Holy Roman Empire was due t o Islamic conquests which effectively blocked overseas trade routes to and from the East. He is either right or wrong, and his causal proposition is either true or false. We establish or repudiate it by questing for evidence, and his 'model' already suggests what sort of evidence would unseat or modify the hypothesis. Evidence indicating that overseas trade continued unabated all during the period in question would surely jeopardize his narrative reconstruction. On the other hand, if we find certain significant items of Eastern import missing from such a detailed catalogue as the Capitulare de Villis, then, using some such instrumental lam as "If the Emperor did not possess coined gold, spices, etc., then no one in Europe did," we infer that no spice, coined gold, etc., were to be had, and that their non-presence testified to a cutting-off of Eastern sources of supply. Any number of other models are possible, of course, but Pirenne's would a t least account for and be consistent with all the known relevant traces. Suppose that further research fails to discover any contravening trace. Then, it seems to me, Pirenne really has given an explanation: we now feel we understand why the event took place, and only a certain caution prevents us from feeling our understanding to be final. Certainly, Pirenne's explanation is defeasible. But any empirical explanation, whether it involves laws or not, is defeasible in this sense. But suppose someone were now to discover a law which held invariantly over a whole class of phenomena, and that he could by specialization 'deduce' the Shift-to-Aachen. I don't think I would regard this as completing Pirenne's accomplishment, nor would I regard Pirenne's model as a sketch for the latter explanation. I think it would be performing a different job altogether. I don't think 'filling-in' Pirenne's model would yield any law a t all, but only more information of a factual sort. For such a law would have to explain a good bit more than simply the Shift-to-Aachen (a law which does not explain wholesale is a dubious law). And it would probably have to be part of a comprehensive social I* Suppose it known t h a t the French government commissioned Rodin t o execute a portal for a proposed Palais des A r t s Ddcoratifs in 1879, the theme t o be taken from Dante's Divine Comedy. Imagine two different models constructed on the basis of this information, one suggesting t h a t the thematic decision was really Rodin's, the other t h a t i t was the government's. Evidence showing t h a t the government wished t o honor the Italian people by celebrating their national masterpiece would support the latter, evidence showing t h a t Rodin had cherished such a project antecedently would support the former. These hypotheses are not incompatible, either with the evidence or with one another, but i t is not difficult t o imagine what further evidence would disqualify either.
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theory, for which Pirenne's 'model' could not be construed as a 'sketch' even in the sense of 'a preliminary study.' T o my knowledge, there is no such theory available, but if one were ever discovered, it would, in Ernest Nagel's words, Undolibtedly have t o be highly abstract, if it is t o cut across the actual cultural differences in human behavior. I t s concepts will have t o be remote from the familiar and obvious traits found in any one society; its articulation will involve the use of novel algorithmic techniques; and its application t o concrete materials will require a special training of a high order.l6
I n one sense, it might seem that such a theory might eliminate the need for narrative models, or 'true stories.' And so it might, if our concrete interests in history were to be extinguished. Rut a t any case it seems clear to me that the whole program of constructing true stories is so different from that of formulating a comprehensive social theory that the former can scarcely be conceived as preparatory to the latter, or the latter a completion of the former. I t is Hempel's mistake, I think, to consider history a pre-science, attending the moment when it, too, can dazzle us with its proper set of laws. It is as though one imagined that writing symphonies was the ultimate goal of every composer, and that stringquartets were 'sketches' for symphonies. But what if history were not, after all, an incomplete science, but a consummatory enterprise, satisfying a special requirement of the human spirit? Are we so impressed with science that we cannot imagine the possibility of intellectual, cognitive, and empirical activities which, though they may be scientific, are not apt, by any extension of their procedures, to become sciences?
Historians support their explanations with 'plain reasoning' re-enforced with factual traces; and by following their reasoning and witnessing the traces (which are in principle accessible to the interested public), we may verify their explanations. In effect, we understand an historical narrative much as we understand any story. T o be sure, if have had experiences similar to those he sometimes reports, understanding may be brought closer to home; and the historian himself mayutilize hisown experiences in order to get a more intimate 'feel' for the events he seeks to describe. Thus, when Ernest Jones writes, My having passed through the identical disciplines as Freud on the way to psychoanalysis-philosophy, neurology, disorder of speech, psychopathology, in t h a t order-has helped me t o follow the work of his pre-analytic period and its transition into the analytical one,16
we can surely agree that such community of experience might make the biographer especially sensitive to certain kinds of information, and more likely t o l5 Ernest Nagel, "Problems of Concept and Theory Formation i n the Social Sciences," i n Science, Language, and Human Rights (Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952), I , 63. '6 Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York; Basic Boolrs, 1952), I, xiii.
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entertain hypotheses which might evade someone to whom such experience were relatively alien. This is the common-sense aspect of Verstehen, but it seems t o me that we frequently arrive a t understanding without having to internalize subjectively the experiences described, relate them to our own experiences, and so 'intuit' what it must have been like to undergo the experiences in question. I need not try to empathize with Rome in order to understand the history of its sewage system, and I understand perfectly the following story: She dedicated her life t o her son's musical career, partly because she had survived so difficult a pregnancy and he was her only child, partly because she had been unable to realize her own musical gifts due t o an early and unfortunate marriage t o a poverty stricken consumptive, for whom she had t o labor twelve hours a day, a t the most menial tasks, simply to pay for the medical attention he required and the narcotics which alone could mitigate his pain.
But I have never had experiences vaguely like those mentioned in my sad narrative, being a male monotone who has had scant commerce with consumptives or addicts. This may be a caricature of the Verstehen position, but the point I am interested in making is simply that we are able to understand in a much less dramatic fashion than Verstehen recognizes. I understand such stories because I know how to use my language; and I frequently, perhaps always, apprehend the meaning of a statement before I have had acquaintance with the state of affairs it designates (as is especially the case with sentences ~vhichdon't designate states of affairs at all, e.g., sentences about unicorns, Mr. Micawber, and the roundsquare watch-fob in Hamlet's pocket). Verstehen confuses meaning with acquaintance. But if my language went only as far as my acquaintance, a great deal of discourse would be opaque to me, which it is not; and specifically, I understand a good deal of history without needing to undergo types of experience a t first hand or vicariously. It is not because I can shut my eyes and not see that I can understand statements about M's blindness, but because I know how to use the word "blind" correctly in the various contexts of its occurrence. Indeed, we can understand historical narratives without recourse to laws or to special types of experience simply by virtue of the fact that our language is so felicitously constructed that we can convey very special information by the use of very general words. Yet there is a crucial sense in which experience enters into the problem both of explanation and understanding in history, and I shall try to indicate what I mean, albeit somewhat obliquely. Common-sense and science have something in common so far as their legalities are concerned, both of them consisting of lams which have a certain tightness and reliability. Each, in its special way, provides us with cues as to what we may expect of the world and not only makes the world somewhat intelligible, but enables us to assimilate new experiences to older concepts in a fairly economical way. The laws of common-sense and science carry us from experience to experience, though perhaps on different levels or in differing contexts, minimizing the mishaps of chance and preparing us for a future which we come to feel will resemble the past, at least in its bolder outlines. And accordingly, both science and common sense betray a pardonable conservatism, a tendency to hang on,
ON EXPLANATIONS IN HISTORY
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for as long as possible, to those generalizations which have proven most apt in dealing with the inflow of experience. Common sense, as a system of laws, is delicately ramified, down to the nicest details of behavior, as evidenced by the fact that we are so seldom surprised in our everyday doings and witnessings. Neither, of course, are infants often surprised : having no general notions, every experience is equivalently random, equally expected and unexpected, the infant being an unconscious master of the Principle of Insufficient Reason. But from the first dawning recognition that certain ministering elements of the background seem geared to inner pangs and urgencies, the nurseling's first generalization sets in; and by time he attains to cultured estate, the erstwhile infant knows pretty much what to expect by way of experience. He has picked up a whole repository of generalizations en route, which constitutes the bedrock of his sanity in adult life, striking off spontaneously the intervals within which experience may be expected to vary and the range of attitudes to be taken for each variation within that interval. It enables us to recognize, without thinking about it, that rocks break windows and that thin ice is dangerous, but also that professors don't eat ice-cream while lecturing and that osprey-eggs never hatch into full-grown kangaroos (though probably no one has ever been told these latter things.) We could not possibly itemize our generalities, but we know, by the registration of surprise, when anything like a counter-instance is met with; and a t such times we are likely t o seek out extenuating conditions. When the thrown rock doesn't break the window, we do not relinquishour law but propose reasons why the event doesn't fall under the law, e.g., it is not a 'regular' window or rock, the throw was not hard enough, something was done with mirrors, etc. And thus we are all conservatives in our ordinary thought, and will go t o some lengths to preserve our laws. And similarly in science: if experimental findings threaten a law, we question the competence of the experimenter, the design of the experiment, or something peculiar in the conditions under which the experiment was performed. As a last resort, we might manufacture the extenuating condition, as the neutrino, for example, an uncharged particle with zero or near-zero mass, was postulated in order to save the laws of conservation of energy, of mass, and of momentum. Of course, experience is sometimes insuppressible, in both common life and science, and when normal expectations are repeatedly violated, some adjustment or other is called for in our conceptual schemes. It is a further attribute of the sane man that he will be flexible under duress, and if necessary will retire an inappropriate set of generalities and shift his expectations. Not all of us are called upon to do this, of course, or a t least not frequently, for the preponderance of experience is likely to fall neatly (more or less) into some common category; we come, in time, to accept our categories as unquestionably true and necessary and eternal. Yet, there is a residue of somewhat untaglich experience which evades ready categorization, though it is neither insistent nor protracted enough to call for a general conceptual overhauling. Events which are sufficiently wayward to solicit a t least mild surprise, but sufficiently isolated to permit retention of everyday categories, are just the sorts of events likely to be described in history-
books, and our interest in them is apt to vary directly as the degree of their waywardness. They cause a certain wonder and create a certain curiosity: we like to hear more about them and how they came about. We are, with respect to such events, like those who listen to the accounts of the traveler come from strange lands; or like those who listen to the tales of long ago, told by old men who have lived long enough so that the once-ordinary ways of their youth have become quaint or wonderful to a different generation, and have taken on the patine of the esoteric. History tells tales of the wonderful and the wayward, and seeks to tell them truly: it is a process of familiarizing the unfamiliar by speaking about it in ordinary language. And this is what I meant when I suggested that the problem of historical explanation has to do, not with any ontological peculiarities of certain types of occurrence, but rather with the cast of our experience which is such that certain events, like wars, revolutions, and the lives of great men, stand out in dramatic relief against the web-work of wont generalities and common expectancies. Let me illustrate this. I n ordinary life, we are almost always involved in some group-situation or other, and in almost every group-situation, some individual will stand out as a leader, in the sense that the remaining individuals defer to his decisions. From the office where one secretary may exercise seniority, to the rifle squad, to the village, to the state, leadership is a common feature of group existence, and one of the things we normally expect in our social relationships. Our experience with groups and leaders equips us with a number of general laws which enable us t o 'understand' leaders and their behavior. But some leaders stand out in very much larger contexts than we are used to, or act in ways different than we have been led to anticipate. We find it difficult to stretch the precepts which enable us to cope with the village mayor and adapt them to individuals like Napoleon or Hitler. The behavior of these men seems to transcend the common categories of leadership-understanding. Characteristically, the doings of such men get celebrated in history-books. This has led some to say, not without justice, that history is simply the story of what great men have done: but the point is that history books happen to get written about such individuals because their careers cannot be filed and forgotten by means of common generalities. Thus history fills a kind of breach in our experience, dealing as it does with things and persons and ocasions which are in some sense 'irregular.' If they were regular, if dictators were as common as grocery-clerks, there would be no need to explain their behavior. The job would already have been done by our latent stock of generalities and covered by laws which, economizing energy as they do, would spare our giving them a second thought. We might call the point of view being advanced here something like "Dramatic Relativism," meaning that the historians of the group will inquire into what is dramatic, relative to the pattern of the group's conceptual schemes, however tedious and workaday the identical events might appear to another group in another place and time. How odd the Carolingian peasant might find it were he to know that his rising and going forth, his diet and duties were of special interest to men grown used to different routines which might, in turn, astound the Carolingian.
ON EXPLANATIONS
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I am suggesting that historical events are 'unique' relative to a certain cast of experience, and that, though we speak of these events in ordinary language, the necessarily generalized terminology of ordinary discourse (general words like 'war,' 'great man,' etc.) never quite reduces such events to instances of types with which we are familiar: there remain over and above the general feat,ures which ordinary usage conveys a residue of 'otherness' which continues to intrigue us, and which guarantees our continued interest. It is this 'otherness' which enables historians to tell, over and again, the story of the Civil War, for instance, to an audience which does not weary. Before such events, the laws of common experience, if articulated, seem irrelevant, irreverent or trivial; and the laws which we might extract from the events themselves-like "If two armies which are equally armed and led, and one has a superiority of men, then the other never winsl7-explain too much and too little. To try to 'explain' Caesar's behavior, for instance, by citing some such broad generalization as 'power always corrupts' does not get quite to the heart of Caesar's case: we may amplify the law with special conditions until finally it turns out that anything which satisfied these conditions would behave like Caesar but as a matter of fact only Caesar happened to satisfy them. But then we might wonder if our 'explanation7is not, after all, merely a duplication of the narrative we might construct describing Caesar's career. I n fact, of course, it would be; and in fact the narrative itself suffices to make clear what happened, describing the causes and conditions of the occurrences, using what instrumental laws may be available for verifying or confirming our story-hypothesis. There is an alternative, of course, but it is not available to the ordinary historian nor can it be utilized with ordinary language-it can be pursued only through a ruthless abstraction of certain systematically relevant properties (or by admitting only certain predicates into our scientific language) which apply to whole ranges of elements, by disregarding certain of their other properties (which might be historically interesting but scientifically irrelevant), and by means of some calculus predicting the occurrence of certain other systematically relevant properties as defined by the predicates of our system. This is the way of science, and I can see no ontological reason why it must remain a closed option in the sphere of the 'spirit'+ we are willing to sacrifice concrete detail. And indeed the price has a t times seemed small enough to pay for scientific salvation. A recent group of historians, for example, regards the ordinary modes of narrative reconstruction "in terms of great men and sequence(s) of important or unique events . . a narrative organization in which the nation's presidents and as a "striking its wars play major parts in both substance and periodizati~n"~~ intellectual anachronism."lg A new synthesis, they feel, would change all this:
.
l7 Karl Popper, T h e O p e n Society and i t s E n e m i e s (Princeton University Press, 1950, 11, 249. Cited by Patrick Gardiner. O n the N a t u r e of Historical E'xplanation, p. 88.
8' T h e Social Sciences in Historical S t u d y . Social Science Research Council Bulletin 64 (New York, 1954), p. 156. Certain of the following remarks are based on my review of this work in J o u r n a l of Philosophy. L I I , 18, pp. 500-502. Is i b i d . , 159.
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"War studied as a social institution would preserve its importance, but war as an arbitrary milestone for historical periodization mould probably disappear. The Civil War, for example, that great divide of American historiography, shrinks in magnitude when viewed in the light of these long-run social criteria."20 T o be sure, if we are willing to let it shrink in magnitude. But it is somewhat like arguing that one's mother shrinks in magnitude in the light of the laws of the ovarian cycle and the widespread cultural norms of maternity. The main meaning of the Civil War is 'dramatically' relative to the cast of our national experience, and no amount of abstraction is likely to cause it to shrink in magnitude relative to that experience. We might, of course, sometime lose interest in it, but then only because some other event will have taken over its dramatic import. We must recognize that an identical event may be a t once systematically relative (by satisfying some predicate of a scientific language) and dramatically relative in the sense I have indicated-but one relation cannot claim any priority over the other, for they belong to different orders of experience. I t is the orders of experience which are likely to remain irreducible, not the phenomena themselves which may enter experience on either level. To do a job of history is to carry on with one order of experience, to do a job of science is to carry on with another. I am inclined to believe that there will remain some intellectual appetite in the minds of men for knowledge of happenings which are unordinary relative to their common-sense conceptions. This knowledge must be conveyed in ordinary language, with all its capabilities for rendering nuances, and for speaking of the unfamiliar in somewhat familiar terms. So long as this appetite remains, and so long as it will be satisfied with true stories, there will be an important place for the practice of history as we presently understand it. Of course, particular historians may decide to forsake this function in favor of some kind of generalized sociology. But then they shall no longer be doing history, but something elm, perhaps even more valuable. And who shall then do history?
Columbia University ibid., 170.
