Several scholars observed that narratives about the human past are evaluated comparatively. Few attempts have been made, however, to explore how such evaluations are actually done. Here I look at a lengthy “contest” among several historiographic narratives, all constructed to make sense of another one—the biblical story of the conquest of Canaan. I conclude that the preference of such narratives can be construed as a rational choice. In particular, an easily comprehensible and emotionally evocative narrative will give way to a (...) complex and mundane one, when the latter provides a more coherent account of the consensually accepted body of evidence. This points to a fundamental difference between historiographic narratives and fiction, contrary to some influential opinions in the philosophy of historiography. Such historiographic narratives have similarities with hypotheses and narrative explanations in natural science. (shrink)

The problem of historiographical evaluation is simply this: By what evaluative criteria might we say that certain works of historiography are better than others? One recently proposed solution to this problem comes by way of Kuukkanen’s postnarrativist philosophy of historiography.1 Kuukkanen argues that because many historiographically interesting statements lack truth-values, we cannot evaluate historiographical claims on a truth-functional basis. In the place of truth, Kuukkanen suggests that we evaluate historiographical claims in terms of justification. The problem with (...) this proposal, as I will argue here, is that it isn’t at all clear what it means for a neither-true-nor-false claim to be justified. Moreover, this proposal also runs into trouble with the factivity of knowledge. The solution I propose here might be called “two-valued” postnarrativism, which retains Kuukkanen’s framework, except with a stricter ontology devoid of neither-true-nor-false historiographical statements. In arguing for this approach to historiographical evaluation, this paper will be structured in the following way: First, I’ll describe Kuukkanen’s postnarrativism in more detail, focusing especially on his account of historiographical evaluation. Next, I’ll introduce two problems that accompany this account, one originating from the factivity of knowledge and the other from trying to divorce justification from the concept of truth. Finally, I argue that not only might these problems be solved by simply committing to all historiographical claims being either true or false, but that Kuukkanen’s account is especially amenable to this. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What Is Historiographic Evidence? Bayesianism Bayesianism as a Model of Historiographic Reasoning Explanationism Towards an Explanationist Bayesianism Applications: Skepticism Applications: Underdetermination References Further Reading.

This paper explores a methodological lineage among French Spinoza scholars which can be traced back to texts written by Victor Delbos (1862–1916), which later branched out into two diametrically opposed orientations in the work by Martial Gueroult (1891–1976) and Paul Vernière (1916–1997), only to be reunited reflexively in the more recent work by Pierre-François Moreau (1948-). The aim is mostly to offer an original reconstruction of the way in which Delbos’ historical programme was inherited by subsequent Spinoza scholars. While retracing (...) this lineage, my focus will be on a specific historiographical principle first formulated by Delbos. In the conclusion, however, I briefly turn to Spinoza himself, arguing how this reconstituted family of twentieth century French historians of philosophy can be characterized as a form of ‘Historiographical Spinozism’. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 3, pp 333 - 348 Philosophers and historians debate not only the correct analysis of historiographic counterfactuals and their possible utilities for historiography and its philosophy but whether they can be more than speculative. This introduction presents the articles in the special issue on historiographic counterfactuals, show how they hang together and what are the main agreements and disagreements among the authors. Finally, it argues that the debate over historiographic counterfactuals spills over now into the (...) debate about applied or practical historiography, what we can learn from historiography. (shrink)

Genocide is a matter of law. It is also a matter of history. Engaging some of the most disturbing responses to the Armenian genocide, Marc Nichanian strikingly reveals the complex role played by law and history in making this and other genocides endure as contentious events. Nichanian's book argues that both law and history fail to contend with the very nature of events for which there is no archive (no documents, no witnesses). Both history and law fail to address the (...) modern reality that events can be—and are now being—perpetrated that _depend_ upon the destruction of the archive, turning monstrous deeds into nonevents. Genocide, this book makes us see, is in one sense the _destruction_ of the archive. It relies on the historiographic perversion. (shrink)

The article Shtogrin I.P. «Historiographical research framework UkrainianVatican relations 1919 – 1921 years» examines the state of scientific development in domestic and foreign historiography research problems of mutual relations of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the Vatican during the 1919 – 1921 years have been analysed in the context of international recognition of Ukrainian statehood and Eastern plans Holy See.

This chapter contains sections titled: Objectivity and Methodology Relativism and Beyond Scientific Historiography Approximating the Truth about History Conclusion References.

Contextualizing the emergence of history of philosophy within eighteenth-century German Enlightenment, this book discusses the philosophical nature of the historiographical concept ‘system of philosophy’ and the concept’s influence upon the methods of history of philosophy and history of ideas.

Genocide is a matter of law. It is also a matter of history. Engaging some of the most disturbing responses to the Armenian genocide, Marc Nichanian strikingly reveals the complex role played by law and history in making this and other genocides endure as contentious events. Nichanian's book argues that both law and history fail to contend with the very nature of events for which there is no archive. Both history and law fail to address the modern reality that events (...) can be—and are now being—perpetrated that _depend_ upon the destruction of the archive, turning monstrous deeds into nonevents. Genocide, this book makes us see, is in one sense the _destruction_ of the archive. It relies on the historiographic perversion. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Counterfactual Character of Historiography Understanding Metaphysical Preliminaries Causal Counterfactual Analysis in Historiography Counterfactuals and Practical Reasoning Science and Counterfactuals References Further Reading.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Argument for Methodological Unity The Argument against Methodological Unity Understanding Others The Ontological Turn and the New Causalist Consensus References.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Concept of “Schools” Main Schools of Historiography Towards a Theory of the History of Historiography Bibliography.

SummaryThe foundations of modern international thought were constructed out of diverse idioms and disciplines. In his impressive book, Foundations of Modern International Thought, David Armitage focuses on the normative idioms of natural law and political philosophy from the Anglophone world, from Hobbes and Locke to Burke and Bentham. I focus on parallel developments in the empirically-oriented disciplines of history and historiography to trace the emergence of histories of the states-system in the Italian- and German-speaking worlds, from Bruni and Sarpi to (...) Pufendorf and Heeren. Taking seriously Armitage's remark that ‘the pivotal moments in the formation of modern international thought were often points of retrospective reconstruction’, I argue that the historical disciplines supplied another significant intellectual context in which the modern world could be imagined as ‘a world of states’. (shrink)

While some philosophers of history have argued that explanations in human history are of a fundamentally different kind than explanations in the natural sciences, I shall argue that this is not the case. Human beings are part of nature, human history is part of natural history, and human historical explanation is a species of natural historical explanation. In this paper I shall use a case study from the history of the American Civil War to show the variety of close parallels (...) between natural and human historical explanation. In both instances, I shall argue that these explanations involve narrative descriptions of causal mechanisms. I shall show how adopting a mechanistic approach to explanation can provide resources to address some important aspects of human historiographic explanation, including problems concerning event individuation, historical meaning, agency, the role of laws, and the nature of contingency. (shrink)

Butterfield defined Whig historiography as studying ―the past with reference to the present‖ to make a simple binary categorization of the good and the evil and make history a story of progress. Originally, the Anglo-American historians used Whig historiography to present the Catholic Church as the antithesis of modernity and liberalism in a reductive manner. Baigent and Leigh further this kind of historiography in The Inquisition.

This paper examines the historiography of literacy between 1780 and 1830 in Britain. The paper first explores the challenges faced by historians in measuring literacy and examines the lenses through which historians have interpreted the available data. Factors thought to contribute to rising literacy rates in this time period include access to education, the Industrial Revolution, religious movements and gender norms.

This paper examines the views of Joseph-Márie Degérando and Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann about empiricism, and the scope and limits of experience as well as its relation to reason and its role in the attainment of true knowledge. While Degérando adopted the “philosophy of experience” and Tennemann advocated Kant’s critical philosophy, both authors blamed each other for the same mistake: if Degérando considered that, despite all appearances to the contrary, critical philosophy fell into empiricism, Tennemann judged that the philosophy of experience (...) was nothing but pure and simple empiricism. Degérando’s and Tennemann’s discrepancies involved not only a discussion of “nomenclatures” and of the role and limits of experience in knowing, but also an epistemological and ideological commitment to the pacification of the intellectual field in the aftermath of the French Revolution. In this line, Degérando’s alignment with the philosophy of experience attempted to distance himself from the politically dangerous sensualism attributed to the idéologie. But, unlike his countryman Charles Villers, he did not want to replace the sensualism by critical philosophy. His opposition to philosophical novelty (which he associated with political revolution) led him to praise only the “eclectic” spirit of Kant’s philosophy. (shrink)

SummaryThe essay intends to find out why although many studies have focused on the three-year revolutionary period in Italy from 1796–1799, the Cisalpine Republic has never been studied in the same detail as the Neapolitan Republic. In reconstructing these events, the two republics are regularly presented in opposing terms. The Cisalpine Republic is portrayed as exemplifying subordination to the military protectorate and politics of France, while the Neapolitan Republic is put forward as the shining example of revolutionary resistance within Italy (...) at the time. The essay intends to underline why the nineteenth and the twentieth century historiography has negatively and prejudicially judged the political experience of the Cisalpine Republic. (shrink)

We performed a critical review of the historiographical studies on biogeography. We began with the pioneering works of Augustin and Alphonse de Candolle. Then, we analyzed the historical accounts of biogeography developed by (1) Martin Fichman and his history on the extensionism-permanentism debate; (2) Gareth Nelson and his critique of the Neo-Darwinian historiography of biogeography; (3) Ernst Mayr, with his dispersalist viewpoint; (4) Alan Richardson, who wrote a microhistory on the biogeographic model constructed by Darwin; (5) Michael Paul Kinch (...) and the ideas discussed in the 19th century about the geographical distribution of living beings; (6) Janet Browne, who highlighted the importance of the pre-Darwinian naturalists; (7) Peter Bowler, who focused mainly on the influence of paleontology on biogeography; (8) James Larson, who looked into the practices of the naturalists of Northern Europe in the late 18th century; and (9) Malte Ebach, who like Larson, was more interested in analysing the practices rather than the ideas of naturalists who studied the geographical distribution of organisms. Finally, these works are compared with each other. There has not been a dominant paradigm in the construction of historical narratives of biogeography; however, they provide a useful context for understanding problems of biogeography that continue to be debated to this day. (shrink)

This chapter is dedicated to the Cassirer’s theories concerning The Logik of Humanities and others Cassirer’s Essais on the «Philosophy of Culture.» The first part presents the concrete passages of mutual criticism on language and its relations with art and in relation to the interpretation of the modern history of philosophy. Brief final remarks recapitulate some radically different ways of understanding idealism with respect to the spiritual activity of man in the history.

What is the one big idea of Koselleck’s Historik understood as a methodological framework for the attempt to combine a theory of historical times with a theory of historical time? In part (1) of this paper, I criticize the two most basic attempts to understand Koselleck’s one big idea as mistaken because they are exclusively interested either in history (in the singular) or in histories (in the plural) and thus miss the central relevance of structures of repetition (“Wiederholungsstrukturen”) for Koselleck’s (...) Historik. In part (2), I will clarify the rather hidden pre-history, the main ambition, the theoretical context and the substantial content of Koselleck’s concept of structures of repetition in history and language. In part (3), I will discuss four historiographical consequences of Koselleck’s structures of repetition. I will end the paper by observing a remarkable theoretical affinity between Barrington Moore’s search for recurring patterns in the field of sociology and Koselleck’s structures of repetition in history and language. Moore’s work illustrates the historiographical potential of the one big idea of Koselleck’s Historik better than any other work I am aware of. (shrink)

In the paper I examine (Section I) the best defense for the claim that methodologies shouldnot function heuristically (thesis-LW) as it appears in John Worrall. I then evaluate (Section II) his proposal of a criterion* M which is offered as a criterion for evaluating competing methodologies such as falsificationism, conventionalism, methodology of research programmes. etc. Finally, I consider (Section III) the consequences of arguments presented earlier (Section I and II) as they bear on the problem of selecting a historiographical (...) model.I argue, among other things, (I) that thesis-LW is defended on some very dubious assumptions; (II) that Worrall's criterion* M falters under three clear cases two of which at least*M should accomodate, and that part of* M's failure can be linked to its being hooked to thesis-LW. By arguments analogous to the ones which serve* M, I show thatcontra John Worrall and John Watkins, thesis-LW is testable; finally, (III) if we accept arguments for thesis-LW and* M we are left with a skeptical conclusion with respect to the choice of a historiographical model which Worrall by parity of reasoning should accept, but does not. (shrink)

Duhem regarded the history of physical science as carrying a twofold lesson for the practicing physicist. First, history revealed the slow, groping, yet continuous development of physical theory toward a true description of the relations among natural entities. Second, history also unmasked false explanations and metaphysical beliefs that might seduce the unwary scientist into following an unfruitful line of research. This paper brings forth the central images underlying Duhem's historiographical project and uses the papers by S. Menn and W. (...) A. Wallace to ask what Duhem's enterprise actually meant in practice. I argue that the main question is the following: What is to count as the proper space of historical meaning and explanation? Strong Duhemians, such as S. Menn, purchase the longue durée at the cost of making historical agents into completely passive transmitters of conceptual homologies; weak Duhemians, such as W. A. Wallace, shorten the temporal distance between agents and permit thereby a modicum of conflict and negotiation within physical theory while still seeking to preserve long-term conceptual genealogies. Both positions, it is argued, allow insufficient room for actors' categories to determine the space of cultural analysis. (shrink)

Summary Although academic disciplines are given to mythologising their own histories, corrective historicisation is no straightforward matter. Anachronisms are most difficult to avoid where our own tacit understandings of the world are used to help structure contexts that are themselves often unstable and indeterminate. This is often the case in attempts to relate agents and propositions to a context of pre-existing problems. Propositions and concepts that are the result of satiric reduction, or unintended consequence, disrupt narrative sequences that lead directly (...) and neatly to present disciplinary identities. (shrink)

Ce bilan historiographique porte sur la nouvelle conception du sexe qui se dessine au siècle des Lumières et ses liens avec le développement d’un type inédit de rapports entre humains et animaux dans les espaces métropolitains et coloniaux. Depuis une trentaine d’années, l’histoire des émotions et l’histoire des sciences de l’homme ont contribué à éclairer les conditions historiques dans lesquelles s’est constitué le paradigme anthropologique des Lumières. L’article identifie un certain nombre de thématiques – la domestication, l’émergence de l’animal de (...) compagnie, la pratique de l’élevage sélectif – dont l’étude a permis de reconfigurer les approches du genre. En portant une attention nouvelle aux relations entre genre et animalité, ces travaux ont apporté une contribution décisive à la compréhension des débats savants et politiques des Lumières sur les frontières de l’humain et le binôme nature-culture. (shrink)

The Anschluss of Austria in 1938 was a major moment for Nazi expansion in Europe. This German annexation has often been framed to portray Austria as the “first victim” in Nazi aggression, placing blame for crimes agaisnt humanity on the Nazi ideology, rather than Austrian individuals or groups complicit with colaboration. This paper seeks to deconstruct this historiographical understanding based on ideology and analyze the impact of agency in examining Austria’s history with Nazism, the Holocaust, and coming to terms (...) with problematic history. (shrink)

CORNELLI, G. (2013). In Search of Pythagoreanism. Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category, “Studia Praesocratica” 4, de Gruyter, Berlin.

This paper offers a rereading of Foucault's much-disputed mid-career historiographical shift to genealogy from his earlier archaeological analytic. Disputing the usual view that this shift involves an abandonment of an archaeological method that was then replaced by a genealogical method, I show that this shift is better conceived as a historiographical expansion. Foucault's work subsequent to this shift should be understood as invoking both genealogy and archaeology. The metaphor of expansion is helpful in clarifying what was involved in (...) Foucault's historiographical shift. I describe two expansions at the heart of Foucault's move. First, Foucault went from analyzing singular isolable domains of practice (such as knowledge) to analyzing the interactions between multiple domains of practice (such as power/knowledge). Second, Foucault went from an analytic which relied on a single temporal category of rupture to an analytic which invoked the relations amongst multiple temporalities, including continuity alongside discontinuity in his subsequent analyses. (shrink)

The article offers a critical reflection on the distance that separates us from an objectification of memory, its historiographical reconstructions and their different targets. At the basis of this enterprise, lies the belief that grasping the nuances and unveiling the ideological mechanisms of narrative reconstructions amounts to critically reflecting on the conditions that enable the narrative objectifications of the past filtered through by memory. To verify this theoretical assumption, the article elaborates on two key research tools that Umberto Eco (...) has employed throughout his life and that permeated his overall work, i.e. the categories of use and interpretation, and applies them to the treatment of the Middle Ages as a historiographical object, to show how medievalism can be an interpretive tool that allows understanding the contemporary age and its hermeneutic and ideological distortions, its fears, its media representations. (shrink)

This article examines historicism as the expansion of historiography beyond its bounds, analogous to Physicalism, Naturalism, Psychologism, and Scientism. Five senses of historicism are distinguished: Ontological Historicism claims ultimate reality is, and only is, historical. Idiographic historicism considers historiography an empirical science that results in observational descriptions of unique singular events. Introspective historicism considers the epistemology of historiography to be founded on self-knowledge. Scientistic historicism considers historiography an applied psychology or social science that can expand to overtake the social sciences. (...) Methodological historicism extends the use of historiographic methodologies to unreliable or dependent evidence. The first four historicisms are inconsistent with historiography within bounds and implode. Methodological historicism describes proper historiographic methodologies that are applied out of their proper bounds, but are used in historiography based on the epistemology of testimony and the tracing of the transmission of information from historical event to historiographic evidence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While thinking about the notion of the “global” in the history of the history of science, this essay examines a related but equally basic concept: the idea of “Western science.” Tracing its rise in the nineteenth century, it shows how it developed as much outside the Western world as within it. Ironically, while the idea itself was crucial for the disciplinary formation of the history of science, the global history behind this story has not been much attended to. Drawing (...) on examples from nineteenth-century Egypt and China, the essay begins by looking at how international vectors of knowledge production (viz., missionaries and technocrats) created new global histories of science through the construction of novel genealogies and through a process of conceptual syncretism. Turning next to the work of early professional historians of science, it shows how Arabic and Chinese knowledge traditions were similarly reinterpreted in light of the modern sciences, now viewed as part of a diachronic and universalist teleology ending in “Western science.” It concludes by arguing that examining the global emergence of the idea of Western science in this way highlights key questions pertaining to the relation of the history of science to knowledge traditions across the world and the continuing search for global histories of science. (shrink)