Philosophic Method:The Quarrel about Historical Explanation
The discussion of the philosophical question of historical explanation is in reality a
disagreement concerning the nature of the philosophic method.
There are primarily two sides taken in this argument, those who agree with Carl Hempel
and those that do not.
According to Hempel a historical event is only sufficiently explained when it logically
fits a set of confirmed pre-existing conditions along with some universal laws.
Certainly all things cannot easily be assigned to rules and laws. Political coups,
assassinations and revolutions are too complex for such a rigid explanation. And who is
to say what perquisites there are for situations. Certainly there is no one who can
predict every instance of a given event, there are just too many variables.
Hempel then notes that Historians are seldom able to stick to his procedure and at best
can only make an explanation sketch. Hempel seems to be saying then, that the majority
of explanations surrounding historical events are inadequate and incomplete.
There are three main divisions of anti-Hempelians. There are those that agree with
Hempel to the point that there are rules and general laws that can be followed, but a
historian's explanation is adequate if all he can provide is a sketch. The second group
states that the general laws are not necessary and as long as the explanation provides an
understandable narrative, it is complete. The final group believes that only one
condition is necessary, and if more information is needed, one only needs to elaborate on
that one condition.
The Hempelians and the anti-Hempelians both have common ground. They are both engaged
in the philosophy of history, but this is where the agreement stops for even the groups
starting points are different.
Hempelians give their explanations to answer the question of why something happened.
Their objective is to replace curiosity with understanding. For this to happen both the
laws and general rules given must logically agree. In other words you must be able to
deduce the answer after given the laws and rules.
It would not be enough for a Hempelian to hear that conditions led up to an event. He
must know himself that these conditions are causes, and he'll know this only if the
conditions are widely known or confirmed causes of said event. These conditions must not
only be confirmed but true or the explanation would merely be an exercise in futility.
An anti-Hempelian's problem with all of this is summarized in that historians do not use
such methods to do their explaining, even if they did an explanation may not result, and
finally historians are doing a very fine job without Hempel's help.
Anti-Hempelians have three principles in their objections. 1. A philosopher should
stick to the facts that he knows and not assign laws and rules that he's not sure of the
existence of. 2. A philosopher cannot be creative and come up with his own theories
because he has to stick to the simple matter of filling in the blanks. 3. Each person
that asks for an explanation wants to know something different. Each has their own
knowledge and interest and it takes different complete answers to satisfy them.
In the end, the Hempelian method is too big of a task. The number of explanations
surrounding certain events are too many for the method to be simple and useful.
Furthermore, this type of classification and identification is more the work of a
scientist, not a philosopher. And what is to happen when there don't seem to be rules
and laws predicting an event, is a Hempelian to then make them up? It would seem then,
that the Hempelians are in danger of losing sight of their objective.
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