Abstract

Historians cannot escape the obligation to give the best possible causal explanations but should recognize that they cannot be more rigorous than the subject matter permits. Rarely if ever can historians identify necessary and sufficient conditions of events, or even sufficient conditions; their aim is usually to seek out the necessary antecedents. Also, they inevitably deal with the teleology of ends and purposes, and with the variable symbolic meanings that constitute culture. But the converse of the limitations on causal claims is the ability to deal with questions of value, taste, and policy. Reductionism is logically appealing, but it leads to a non-historical form of knowledge which has achieved no success in understanding the activities of cultural man