scholarly journals The Science of Stories:  Human History and the  Narrative Philosophy of Science

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Robert Alexander Hurley
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Human History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
Geological Sciences ◽  
Literary Narrative ◽  
Direct Use

<p>There is a pronounced tendency within contemporary philosophy of history to think of historical knowledge as something apart from the kind of knowledge generated in the sciences. This has given rise to a myriad of epistemological issues. For if historical knowledge is not related to the scientific, then what is it? By what logic does it proceed? How are historical conclusions justified? Although almost the entirety of contemporary philosophy of history has been dedicated to such questions, there has been little real and agreed upon progress. Rather than fire yet another salvo in this rhetorical war, however, this thesis wishes instead to examine what lies beneath the basic presumption of separatism which animates it. Part One examines several paradigmatic examples of twentieth century philosophy of history in order to identify the grounds by which their authors considered history fundamentally different in kind from the sciences. It is concluded that, in each case, the case for separatism fows from the pervasive assumption that any body of knowledge which might rightly be called a science can be recognised by its search for general laws of nature. As history does not seem to share this aim, it is therefore considered to be knowledge of a fundamentally different kind. This thesis terms this the "nomothetic assumption." Part Two argues that such nomothetic assumptions are not an accurate representation of either scientific theory or practice and therefore that any assumption of separatism based upon them is unsound. To do this, examples of acknowledged scientific problems from the biological and geological sciences which do not involve the use of general laws are examined, with the aim of discovering how these historical disciplines are able to do the work of explanation in their absence. They do so, it is concluded, through a mechanism of epistemic (as opposed to literary) narrative. Having thus identified how historical sciences proceed without making direct use of laws, Part Two then generalises this model of scientific narrative and shows how it can be used to model existing practices in human history. This conclusion has far-reaching consequences, for it brings a single definition, method, and logic of confirmation to all studies of the past – whether traditionally acknowledged as scientific or historical. Thus all historical enquiries proceed by a common logic and by a common method. This effectively and definitively places human history among the sciences, without the need for the kind of radical transformation past attempts to do this have required.</p>

scholarly journals The Science of Stories:  Human History and the  Narrative Philosophy of Science

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Robert Alexander Hurley
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Human History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
Geological Sciences ◽  
Literary Narrative ◽  
Direct Use

<p>There is a pronounced tendency within contemporary philosophy of history to think of historical knowledge as something apart from the kind of knowledge generated in the sciences. This has given rise to a myriad of epistemological issues. For if historical knowledge is not related to the scientific, then what is it? By what logic does it proceed? How are historical conclusions justified? Although almost the entirety of contemporary philosophy of history has been dedicated to such questions, there has been little real and agreed upon progress. Rather than fire yet another salvo in this rhetorical war, however, this thesis wishes instead to examine what lies beneath the basic presumption of separatism which animates it. Part One examines several paradigmatic examples of twentieth century philosophy of history in order to identify the grounds by which their authors considered history fundamentally different in kind from the sciences. It is concluded that, in each case, the case for separatism fows from the pervasive assumption that any body of knowledge which might rightly be called a science can be recognised by its search for general laws of nature. As history does not seem to share this aim, it is therefore considered to be knowledge of a fundamentally different kind. This thesis terms this the "nomothetic assumption." Part Two argues that such nomothetic assumptions are not an accurate representation of either scientific theory or practice and therefore that any assumption of separatism based upon them is unsound. To do this, examples of acknowledged scientific problems from the biological and geological sciences which do not involve the use of general laws are examined, with the aim of discovering how these historical disciplines are able to do the work of explanation in their absence. They do so, it is concluded, through a mechanism of epistemic (as opposed to literary) narrative. Having thus identified how historical sciences proceed without making direct use of laws, Part Two then generalises this model of scientific narrative and shows how it can be used to model existing practices in human history. This conclusion has far-reaching consequences, for it brings a single definition, method, and logic of confirmation to all studies of the past – whether traditionally acknowledged as scientific or historical. Thus all historical enquiries proceed by a common logic and by a common method. This effectively and definitively places human history among the sciences, without the need for the kind of radical transformation past attempts to do this have required.</p>

Troubled Senses

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jed Z. Buchwald ◽  
Mordechai Feingold
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human History ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Argumentative Structure

This chapter considers the roots of Isaac Newton’s interest in natural and historical knowledge. In the late seventeenth century, experiment-based knowledge remained suspect. Technical chronologers developed systems of concordances and sequences that located events of human history in time by means of their simultaneous occurrences with particular astronomical events, usually eclipses. It is precisely here that Isaac Newton, as a chronologer, differed programatically from his predecessors: he sought to use astronomical tools to mold singular events into a system for understanding ancient history, indeed for grasping the entire development of civilization—what’s more, a system that shared and exemplified the same evidentiary and argumentative structure deployed in his science.

“Big History” Old and New: Presuppositions, Limits, Alternatives

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Megill
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Innovative Approach ◽  
Human History ◽  
Comparative History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Big History

In recent years David Christian and others have promoted “Big History” as an innovative approach to the study of the past. The present paper juxtaposes to Big History an old Big History, namely, the tradition of “universal history” that flourished in Europe from the mid-sixteenth century until well into the nineteenth century. The claim to universality of works in that tradition depended on the assumed truth of Christianity, a fact that was fully acknowledged by the tradition’s adherents. The claim of the new Big History to universality likewise depends on prior assumptions. Simply stated, in its various manifestations the “new” Big History is rooted either in a continuing theology, or in a form of materialism that is assumed to be determinative of human history, or in a somewhat contradictory amalgam of the two. The present paper suggests that “largest-scale history” as exemplified in the old and new Big Histories is less a contribution to historical knowledge than it is a narrativization of one or another worldview. Distinguishing between largest-scale history and history that is “merely” large-scale, the paper also suggests that a better approach to meeting the desire for large scale in historical writing is through more modest endeavors, such as large-scale comparative history, network and exchange history, thematic history, and history of modernization.

The Concept of Man as Presupposed by the Historical Studies

1970 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 14-31
Author(s):  
P. L. Gardiner
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Historical Thinking ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
General Context ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Thought

I should like to begin by removing a misconception to which the title of this lecture may possibly give rise. My concern is not with general propositions regarding certain fairly well-attested human characteristics of the kind to which historians may, from time to time, advert in the course of their work or to which they may appeal in support of the account provided of some particular event or occurrence. I am not myself an historian, and for me to make ex cathedra pronouncements on such topics as these might well seem to constitute an unjustifiable intrusion upon a field about which I am not qualified professionally to speak. My subject lies within the sphere of philosophy of history rather than of history proper; it belongs, in other words, to a branch of philosophical inquiry, and as such relates, not to empirical facts and events of the sort to which the practising historian addresses himself, but to those assumptions, categories and modes of procedure that are, or are believed to be, intrinsic to historical thought and discourse. In this general context I wish to discuss two approaches to the problem of elucidating the character of historical knowledge and explanation. Both of the approaches I have in mind have achieved a considerable measure of support at the present time; they have also been widely understood as offering profoundly divergent — indeed, diametrically opposed — views of what is central to the structure of historical thinking and to the type of activity upon which the historian is essentially engaged. It has on occasions been suggested that what — amongst other things — divides adherents to the views in question is the fact that they are committed to radically different conceptions of the subject-matter of the historical studies; that is to say, of human beings and their activities. In the light of this fundamental disagreement, it is argued, many of the more intractable controversies that have arisen concerning the concepts and interpretative schemes in terms of which it is possible or legitimate to treat the human past become readily intelligible. In what follows I want to examine this claim. First, however, let me give a brief, and necessarily somewhat crude, outline of the two positions I have referred to, starting with one that is often described as ‘positivist’.

scholarly journals Peter Munz and Historical Thought

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-394
Author(s):  
Frank Ankersmit
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Scientific Laws ◽  
Covering Law ◽  
Historical Thought

Abstract Few philosophers of history ever recognized the profundity of Peter Munz’s The Shapes of Time that came out in 1977. In this book Munz upheld the view that no part or aspect of the past itself provides us with the solid fundament of all historical knowledge. For him, the historian’s most fundamental logical entity is what he calls the Sinngebild. The Sinngebild consists of two events defined and held together by a covering law. These CL’s can be anything from simple truisms, the regularities we know from daily life to truly scientific laws. But ‘underneath’ these Sinngebilde there is nothing. Hence, Munz’s bold assertation: ‘the truth of the matter is that there is no ascertainable face behind the various masks every story-teller is creating’ and his claim that his philosophy of history is ‘an idealism writ small’. Next, Munz distinguishes between ‘explanation’ and ‘interpretation’. We ‘explain’ the past by taking seriously the historical agent’s self-description and ‘interpret’ it by stating what it looks like from our present perspective. ‘Explanation’ and ‘interpretation’ may ‘typologically’ be more or less similar. Relying on a number of very well-chosen examples from his own field (Munz was a medievalist), this enables Munz to argue why one historical interpretation may be superior to another. In his later life Munz developed a speculative philosophy of history inspired by Popper’s fallibilism.

scholarly journals Narrative, history, and fiction: history games as boundary works

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 319-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helyom Viana Telles ◽  
Lynn Alves
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Doctoral Study ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
The Past ◽  
Electronic Games ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Literary Narrative

This work arises from the reflections generated by a post-doctoral study that investigates how history games can contribute to the production and dissemination of representations, pictures, and imaginaries of the past. We understand history games to be digital electronic games whose structure contains narratives or simulations of historical elements (Neves, 2010). The term notion of “border works” is used by Glezer and Albieri (2009) to discuss the role of literary and artistic works that, standing outside the historiographical field and having a fictional character, are forms of the dissemination of historical knowledge and approximation with the past. We want to show how, under the impact of the linguistic turn, the boundaries between history and fiction have been blurred. Authors such as White (1995) and Veyne (2008) found both a convergence with and identification between historical narrative and literary narrative that interrogates the epistemological status of history as a science. These critiques result in an appreciation of fictional works as both knowledge and the dissemination of historical knowledge of the past. We then examine the elements of the audiovisual narratives of electronic games (Calleja, 2013; Frasca, 1999; Jull, 2001; Murray, 2003; Zagalo, 2009) in an attempt to understand their specificity. Next, we investigate the place of the narrative and historical simulations of electronic games in contemporary culture (Fogu, 2009). Finally, we discuss how historical knowledge is appropriated and represented by history games (Arruda, 2009; Kusiak, 2002) and analyze their impact on the production of a historical consciousness or an imaginary about the past.

scholarly journals GALIA, ISTORIJA IR GENEALOGIJA: FRIEDRICHAS NIETZSCHE IR MICHELIS FOUCAULT

Problemos ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 73-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrius Bielskis
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Human History ◽  
Will To Power ◽  
Types Of Knowledge ◽  
The Will

Straipsnyje aptariamos Friedricho Nietzsche’s ir Michelio Foucault genealogijos sampratos. Teigiama, kad genealogija gilinasi į istoriją ne dėl įvykių, mūšių ir karų aprašymo, bet dėl diskursyvių režimų ir praktikų, kurios formuoja mūsų tapatybę. Glaudus pažinimo/tiesos bei galios saitas yra esminis tiek Nietzsche’s, tiek Foucault genealogijai. Foucault dispositive (suprantamumo režimas) yra viena iš esminių sąvokų tiek istoriškumo sampratai, tiek studijuojant pačią istoriją. Nyčiška valios galiai idėja transformuojama į pažinimo tipais grindžiamą ir besiremiančią galios santykių strategijų idėją. Daroma išvada, jog Foucault genealogija redukuoja prasmę į galios santykius. Taip pat teigiama, kad Foucault sampratoje istorija yra pažini ne dėl jos vidinio prasmingumo, bet dėl to, jog žinios ir diskursyvios praktikos, būdamos esminės istorijos vyksmo procesui, yra suvokiamos kaip taktikos ir strategijos.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: genealogija, istorijos filosofija, galia, diskursas.Power, History and Genealogy: Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel FoucaultAndrius Bielskis SummaryThe essay explores Friedrich Nietzsche’s and Michel Foucault’s accounts of genealogy. It argues that genealogy sees human history not in terms of events, battles and wars (i.e. through empirical facts), but in terms of discursive regimes and practices which form our subjectivity. The link between knowledge/truth and power plays crucial role in both Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s accounts of genealogy. Foucault’s notion of dispositive (the regime of intelligibility) serves as a key concept in his approach to history. The Nietzschean idea of the will to power is transformed into the idea of strategies of relations of forces supporting and supported by types of knowledge. The essay concludes that Foucault’s genealogy reduces meaning to power relations. It argues that in Foucault’s thought human history is intelligible not because of its inner meaning, but because knowledge and discourses, which play a key role in human history, are understood in terms of tactics and strategies.Keywords: genealogy, philosophy of history, power, discourse.

scholarly journals THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE B. CROCE'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

2021 ◽  
pp. 246-268
Author(s):  
Артём Александрович Аванесян
Keyword(s):  
Life Experience ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Individual

Развиваемый Бенедетто Кроче подход к осмыслению специфики исторического познания приводит к формулированию идеи его укоренения в индивидуальном жизненном опыте познающего человека. Критика субстанциальной философии истории задает единственно возможную стратегию исследования прошлого через изучение единичных фактов и явлений, понимание которых определяется обстоятельствами и возможностями исторической ситуации работы исследователя. Такой проект истории приобретает черты изменчивого, ситуативного, принципиально незаконченного знания, находящегося в постоянном процессе становления. The approach to understanding the specifics of historical knowledge developed by Benedetto Croce leads to the formulation of the idea of its rooting in the individual life experience of a cognizing person. Criticism of the substantial philosophy of history sets the only possible strategy for studying the past through the study of individual facts and phenomena, the understanding of which is determined by the circumstances and possibilities of the historical situation of the researcher's work. This project of history acquires the features of a changeable, situational, fundamentally unfinished knowledge that is in a constant process of formation.

‘Traditions’ as Context in the History of Political Theory

1979 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Lockyer
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Consideration

An adequate methodology in the history of political theory is dependent on a adequate philosophy of history. Firstly, in the course of a critical consideration of other writers on methodology (principally W. G. Greenleaf and Q. Skinner) it is suggested that ‘intellectual traditions’, of two sorts, might provide an appropriate unit of context. Secondly, a broadly anti-naturalist philosophy of history is adopted, which makes use of Collingwood and Hegel, and it is argued that intellectual traditions are compatible with this view of historical knowledge. It is concluded that the opposition between the universalist text-orientated approach and the particularist historical approach to the study of the history of political theory is a false dichotomy. We can learn from past ideas as a traditional inheritance.

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