In the increasing body of metatheoretical literature on "causal mechanisms," definitions of "mechanism" proliferate, and these increasingly divergent definitions reproduce older theoretical and methodological oppositions. The reason for this proliferation is the incompatibility of the various metatheoretical expectations directed to them: (1) to serve as an alternative to the scientific theory of individual behavior (for some social theorists, most notably Jon Elster); (2) to provide solutions for causal inference problems in the quantitative social sciences, in social history, and in the (...) (3) qualitative research context; and (4) to serve as an alternative for narratives (Charles Tilly). Mechanisms can do (1) only as under-specified law-like regularities, deliver (2) as robust generative processes represented by models, and accomplish (3) as fragile generative processes (stories), but these are not all compatible. (edited). (shrink)

We test the hypothesis that demographic continuity was a necessary condition of performable token post-communist social restorations. Demographic continuity means sufficient overlapping between populations of original and restored systems. Token social restoration refers to restorations where original and restored systems are identical. It is opposed to type restoration where original and restored systems are numerically different instances of the same type. The identity of original and restored systems in token restorations is achieved by performing various practices in the restored system (...) to establish institutional continuity with the original system. The restitution of property rights is the most important of them in the post-communist restorations. So our hypothesis claims that these practices cannot be performed without sufficient demographic continuity. We abstract the demographic continuity thresholds by measuring shares of survivors from the precommunist times in the population of Baltic countries by 1990. Our data confirm the hypothesis as in none of post-communist countries with demographic continuity below these thresholds there was property rights restitution. (shrink)

This selection of texts should interest those who study analytical philosophy of history, methodology of history, and historical sociology. It contains contributions by Polish historians and philosophers since 1931, with pride of place given to the work of the Poznań school in the philosophy of science and humanities. With Jerzy Kmita, Leszek Nowak, and Jerzy Topolski as its leaders, it emerged in late 1960s as a synthesis of Marxism and the Polish brand of logical positivism known as the Lwow-Warsaw school. (...) Most papers discuss or exemplify various forms of idealization in historical research. Although the papers demonstrate the usefulness of modeling in historical sociology and nonnarrative history, the collection as a whole does not provide realistic examples to substantiate the Poznań school's stronger claim of the decomposability of historical narratives into separate strips related to hierarchically ordered “essential factors.”. (shrink)

This book is a collection of papers published in English by the best internationally known Polish writer in metahistory during the last three decades of the past century. Expanded by translation of selected fragments from Polish, it provides international readers for the first time a synoptic picture of Jerzy Topolski’s contributions to theoretical self-reflection of historical studies. During his lifetime, Topolski presented himself and was perceived as an exponent of the “idealizational theory of science” (ITS) of the Poznań school of (...) methodology, applying this theory to historical studies. After locating his work in this context, the broader view of Topolski’s contribution is advanced, locating it in the tradition of attempts of internal self-explication of historical studies, going back to Droysen (Historik) and Lelewel (historyka), and opposing themselves to philosophical metatheories of history. Ironically, Topolski’s methodological work gained international recognition because it was perceived as a philosophical contribution. However, in Poland itself, Topolski’s work was uniquely successful among historians and it has been a nearly obligatory part in the academic socialization of new generations of Polish historians since the 1970s. (shrink)

This paper discusses the prospect of the "new social history" guided by the recent work of Charles Tilly on the methodology of social and historical explanation. Tilly advocates explanation by mechanisms as the alternative to the covering law explanation. Tilly's proposals are considered to be the attempt to reshape the practices of social and historical explanation following the example set by the explanatory practices of molecular biology, neurobiology, and other recent "success stories" in the life sciences. Recent work in the (...) philosophy of science on these practices by Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, Carl Craver and others is used as the foil to disclose the difficulties of Tilly's project. Most important among them is the dilemma of specification: if diagrams (standard forms of the representation of mechanisms) are intended as representations of robust causal processes, they cannot be specific enough to provide complete mechanism schemata, and are bound to remain mechanism sketches. If mechanism sketches are elaborated in detail by tracing particular causal processes, they provide representations of fragile causal processes, which cannot be considered as mechanisms comparable to those in advanced life and other special sciences. Tilly's work on the explanation of mechanisms can be considered as symptomatic for the recent trend to visualize the forms of historical representation. As far as diagrams seem to be able to communicate stories in a direct way (without narrative discourse), this trend is a challenge for the theory of historical representation. The new theories of scientific explanation focusing on the explanatory practices of the life sciences can provide examples and be the source of inspiration for the work on the theory of historical and social explanation, going beyond the confines of the received framework of the covering law model of explanation. (shrink)