theory, it cannot be

applied with any plausibility to the field of history.

The most striking thing about history is that the facts it
purports to describe are past facts; and past facts are no longer
accessible to direct inspection. We cannot, in a word, test the
accuracy of historical statements by simply seeing whether they
correspond to a reality which is independently known. How
then can we test them? The answer which any practising
historian would give to this question would be that we do so
by referring to historical evidence. Although the past is
not accessible to direct inspection it has left ample traces of
itself in the present, in the shape of documents, buildings,
coins, institutions, procedures and so forth. And it is upon
these that any self-respecting historian builds his
reconstruction of it: every assertion the historian makes, he would
say, must be supported by some sort of evidence, direct or
indirect. So-called historical statements which rest on any
other basis (for example, on the historian's unaided
imagination) should be given no credence. At their best

of theory and the constraints of evidence. There is an important difference between

theory (and, more generally, the ideas of historians in the present) influencing the
evidence and theory determining the evidence. There are still words on the pages of
documents from the past, and any description of the past, any theory proposed, must
make sense of these words, at least of most of them. In this way, the evidence constrains
the descriptive process. The description cannot be pure construction, nor is it entirely
determined by factors in the present. But the issue for philosophy of historiography
is to precisely determine how, and how much, the historical evidence constrains
the historiographic description. Theory influences evidence, but it does not completely
determine it. And evidence influences theory, but it does not completely determine it.
Somewhere in the vague reciprocal relation is the precise description of the structure
of historiographic knowledge of history.
This structural issue can be linked to a central concern in more general epistemo-
logy, a contrast between foundational and coherence models of justification. The need
to interpret evidence makes it implausible to regard it as epistemically foundational.
The evidence can only justify a theory if the evidence has been justified. But even in a
coherence model of justification there are important constraints. The lack of founda-
tions does not mean anything goes. The challenge, in epistemology as in philosophy
of historiography, is to specify the role of evidence, giving it the appropriate epistemic
and informational authority to increase the likelihood of accuracy.
When coherence is used as an epistemic virtue, broader coherence is better. This has
a social manifestation in that broad agreement on some historical description is some
reason to think it is accurate. Peer review, the academic version of public justification,
enforces a coherence within a network of generally accepted ideas. But this agreement
may have been, in some cases, built in and reinforced by uniformity in education. To
convince your peers is to convince those who were trained as you were. Broader coher-
ence, and hence more justification, would be in convincing a larger society, your close
peers, that is, your theoretical allies, and those outside your school of thought. Better
yet is to write genuinely enduring descriptions of the past that will be agreeable to future
schools of thought. This is real inter-theoretic coherence. The idea is to avoid, as best
we can, the narrow, teleological, and parochial point of view, such as the Whiggish
point of view, that leads to inaccuracy.
The underlying proposal here is that objectivity in historiography is to be found, at
least in part, in intersubjectivity. Justification of historiographic descriptions is, at least
in an important part, a matter of informed agreement.
Explanation and Understanding
There is more to historiography than simply describing the human past; it is possible
to explain it as well. In addition to knowing what happened, we can try to understand
22philosophy of historiography
what happened. This raises the question of the nature of historiographic explanation,
and again, the comparison to science is a common and informative approach. It is import-
ant to note though, that scientific explanation is not so clearly understood itself, and
there is much disagreement and debate within the philosophy of science regarding the
structure, content and epistemic status of explanation.
Carl Hempel (1942), a pioneer in the study of scientific explanation, proposed a straight-
forward application of what he took to be the basic scientific model to explanations in
historiography. This is the covering law model of explanation, so-called because an event
or recurring phenomenon is explained by showing that is an instance of a general law,
that is, it is covered by the law. For example, a helium balloon rises in air. This is explained
by citing the law of buoyancy, along with the specific conditions of the case that show
it to be covered by the law. The weight of the balloon is less than the weight of the
same volume of air, and the buoyant force is equal to the weight of the displaced fluid,
so the net force is up. This is, by Hempel’s account, a paradigm scientific example.
It requires a law of nature.
In many cases, the specific conditions are unstated. Why does the balloon rise?
Buoyancy. In some cases, the law itself is unstated. Why does the balloon rise?
Because it weighs less than the air it displaces. The law is unstated, but it is nonethe-
less at work as a premise in the argument. Sometimes the law is statistical, and not
surprisingly, these cases are trickier. Why did this atom radioactively decay? Because
of the laws of weak-nuclear forces. But this other identical atom has not decayed. The
law in this case is inherently probabilistic, but it is still a necessary component of the
explanation.
The question is whether historical events and phenomena can be, or should be,
explained this way, by citing the law that covers the instance. Examples of covering
law explanations are easy to find in science. They are much harder to find in historio-
graphy, and those that are suggested often seem forced and artificially reconstructed
to fit the form of covering law. This is because laws of human behavior are scarce,
perhaps nonexistent. Insofar as historical events are unique, there will be no laws to
cover them. But the uniqueness is itself an issue. There was only one Peloponnesean
War, but there have been many wars. Important descriptive words are used to cover
a variety of cases, otherwise we would never understand what was being said of the
past, and that invites generalization.
But not all generalizations are laws. Some generalizations are merely analytic. All
revolutions bring about wholesale change. Sure enough, but this is simply expanding
on the definition of “revolution.” It is not a law, and it cannot explain anything. Why
were there such dramatic changes in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century?
Because it was a revolution. That simply restates the question.
Some generalizations express merely contingent repetition. These are not laws
either. All Presidents of the United States have been male. True, but this generaliza-
tion doesn’t explain why Chester A. Arthur was male.
Laws, in addition to being generalizations, invoke necessity. It’s not just that all As
are B; it’s that all As must be B. So using the covering law model of explanation must
assume some important aspects of necessity in human action and some essential
aspects of human nature. It precludes the possibility and ability to explain some event
in terms of its uniqueness. It ignores any explanatory value in the idiosyncratic
23peter kosso
aspects of human behavior, and it disregards the efficacy and importance of human
agency.
As an alternative to covering law explanation, it is proposed that narrative itself is
a kind of explanation, and that narrative is the only form of explanation suitable to
history. Narrative makes no assumptions about laws of human behavior or essential
human nature. It does not rely on generalization. Rather, it highlights human indi-
viduality and allows for free will. Historical events are explained simply in virtue of fitting
into a narrative. They are explained when they are situated in their context.
Description in narrative context is explanation, and in this way, there is no difference
between description and explanation.
In this model, there is no difference between knowledge and understanding. Like putting
together a mosaic, seeing how an individual tile fits in with its surrounding tiles is to
understand both the role it plays and the correctness of the fit. We see what it means
when we see that it fits.
Narrative explanation suits the situation of historiography, but not science. This is
because of the human aspect of history. Historians have a special connection to the
thing they study, since they are humans studying humans. Biologists have no intel-
lectual rapport with amoeba, so understanding amoeba requires more than merely
describing them. Collingwood emphasized the essentially human aspect of history and
the resulting difference between historiographic and scientific methods. “All history is
the history of thought” (Collingwood 1993 [1946]: 215). The historiographic method
therefore requires attention to the mental aspect of actions. The historian must “think
himself into this action” (p. 213). This is no subjective empathy he is describing, but
a “critical thinking” (p. 215) in which one “re-enacts [the action] in the context of
[the historian’s] knowledge” (p. 215). That is, the past action, including the mental
component, is described by situating it within our description of the historical context.
It is described within the larger narrative pattern, and to describe the ideas and events
in their narrative place is, at the same time, to understand them.
Collingwood’s general method of historiography is similar to Thomas Kuhn’s
(1996) prescription for the historiography of science. Full immersion in the paradigm
of the time is the only way to understand what past scientists were doing. Past theor-
ies must be described on their own terms and evaluated by their own standards. Anything
else would be Whiggish.
There is an inherent circularity in Collingwood’s method. Individual events and actions
are understood by being situated in the larger context. But the larger context is under-
stood by being built of individual events. It is a hermeneutic circle, and perhaps the
only way to understand other people. Understanding humans may be a fundamentally
different process than understanding the mindless objects studied in natural science.
Historiography may be fundamentally distinct from science.
Summary
The important issues in analytic philosophy of historiography show up in a variety
of ways and places. The issues are epistemological: accuracy, objectivity, and the
ability to describe the human past. These concerns surface in describing the status and
24philosophy of historiography
structure of historical and historiographic facts, evidence, and justification. One quick
way to summarize most of what is at stake is to distinguish between discovering and
constructing the human past. How much of what we say about what happened in the
past is a matter of discovering what in fact happened, and how much is a matter of
imposing ourselves on the past? If you can answer that, you will make progress in
philosophy of historiography.
References
Becker, C. (1910). “Detachment and the Writing of History,” Atlantic Monthly, pp. 524–36.
Bloch, M. (1953). The Historian’s Craft (New York: Vintage Books).
Carr, E. H. (1961). What Is History? (New York: Random House).
Collingwood, R. G. (1946). The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Croce, B. (1941). History as the Story of Liberty (London: George Allen & Unwin).
Danto, A. (1965). Analytical Philosophy of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Finley, M. I. (1987). Ancient History: Evidence and Models (New York: Penguin).
Goodman, N. (1978). Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett).
Hempel, C. (1942). “The Function of General Laws in History,” Journal of Philosophy, 39, pp. 35–
48.
Hodder, I. (1991). Reading the Past, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Hume, D. (1975) [1740]. A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge; 2nd edn., revd. P. H.
Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Kuhn, T. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd edn. (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press).
Further Reading
Appleby, J., Hunt, L., and Jacob, M. (1994). Telling the Truth about History (New York: W.W.
Norton).
Atkinson, R. (1978). Knowledge and Explanation in History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).
Bunzl, M. (1997). Real History (New York: Routledge).
D’Amico, R. (1989). Historicism and Knowledge (New York: Routledge).
Dray, W. (1993). Philosophy of History, 2nd edn. (Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice-Hall).
Goldstein, L. (1976). Historical Knowing (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press).
Gorman, J. L. (1982). The Expression of Historical Knowledge (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press).
Kosso, P. (2001). Knowing the Past (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books).
McCullagh, C. (1984). Justifying Historical Descriptions (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press).
Murphey, M. (1973). Our Knowledge of the Historical Past (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill).
Murphey, M. (1994). Philosophical Foundations of Historical Knowledge (Albany, NY: SUNY
Press).
Tucker, A. (2004). Our Knowled

geral, quatro escolas são mais relevantes nesse período: a academia, o liceu, o estoicismo e
o epicurismo. São chamadas de escolas, pois, além de compartilharem a filosofia como um maneira
de viver, eram organizadas em aluno-professor, cultivavam certa metodologia de pesquisa e certos
dogmas. Sobre a academia, ela retornou a bases socráticas e se tornou um centro de debate de temas
diversos por intermédio da dialética. Sobre o Liceu, especializou-se em uma escola que reunia e
interpretava diversos dados e pesquisas desde a área física até a social. Sobre as outras duas, foram
a produção filosófica mais autêntica da época e muito se discute se por isso sofreram influências das
religiões orientais.
1926 e 1928. O interessante é que 1928 foi o ano em que ele se voltou para
a lógica matemática, que lhe renderia sua famosa prova. Não é de admi-
rar que ele deixasse de ter tempo ou motivação para as sessões semanais.
Sua associação com os positivistas lógicos levou à falsa crença de
que ele próprio foi um positivista e de que seus teoremas da incomple-
tude são uma conseqüência dos princípios positivistas. Os teoremas da
incompletude de Gõdel ainda costumam ser considerados um dos
maiores sucessos do positivismo lógico: o resultado revolucionário
da aplicação de seus princípios à matemática. Assim, por exemplo,
no recente Wittgenstein's poker [O atiçador de Wittgenstein], David
Edmonds e John Eidinow escrevem:
A voz do Círculo ainda pode ser ouvida em uma série de epônimos filosóficos. Em
1931, Gõdel publicou seu teorema que frustrou quaisquer tentativas de desenvol-
ver um fundamento lógico para a matemática. Ele mostrou que é impossível
demonstrar a consistência de um sistema aritmético formal dentro dele mesmo.
Seu artigo de quinze páginas provou que parte da matemática não podia ser pro-
vada -
que quaisquer que fossem os axiomas aceitos na matemática, sempre
haveria algumas verdades que não poderiam ser validadas a partir deles. 14
A citação aos dois teoremas de Gõdel está mais ou menos correta,
embora tenham sido fundidos em um só "teorema". Mas dizer que a voz
do Círculo pode ser ouvida nos teoremas de Gõdel está muito distante
da verdade.A voz que Godel ouviu dentro de seus teoremas foi a do pla-
tonismo. Qualquer posição metafísica, e ainda mais o platonismo,
constitui pura e simplesmente um anátema para um positivista lógico.
Gõdel se tornara platônico em 1925, um ano antes de aderir ao
grupo de discussão. A orientação antimetafísica do grupo não teve
nenhuma influência sobre ele, e, quanto a seus membros, aparente-
mente nunca suspeitaram - pelo menos por um longo tempo - de
que ele não compartilhava de suas visões. Ao que tudo indica, ele deu
poucas pistas. Não era de sua natureza na época, e jamais seria, discu-
tir face a face com aqueles de quem discordava. Sua aversão ao conflito
63INCOMPLETUDE
era tamanha que chegava a constituir uma excentricidade, embora não
das mais pronunciadas. Ele se recusava a contestar o ponto de vista de
outra pessoa, a não ser que tivesse certeza absoluta, ou seja, uma prova.
Por toda vida, Gõdel preferiu que suas provas matemáticas falassem
por ele. (Talvez não por acaso aquele homem cuja extrema reserva
ocultava convicções intensas tivesse produzido os resultados matemá-
ticos mais prolixos da história dessa disciplina.) Ele desanimava
quando os outros não captavam tudo que estava tentando dizer. 15 Até o
fim da vida deplorou que ainda considerassem seus pontos de vista
compatíveis com os do Círculo de Viena.*
Quais os pontos de vista do Círculo de Viena? O positivismo lógico foi,
acima de tudo, um movimento que falava em nome da precisão e do pro-
gresso associados às ciências. Procurou apropriar-se da metodologia que
tão bem servira às ciências, destilar a essência dessa metodologia, não ape-
nas para depurar a própria ciência de suas tendências mais misticamente
vagas e metafísicas- nenhuma caracterização continha uma carga nega-
tiva pior do que "metafísico"-, mas também para depurar todas as áreas
intelectuais. Tratava-se de um programa de higiene intelectual.
No espírito vienense da época, esse grupo de pensadores de diferen-
tes campos - matemática, filosofia, as ciências físicas e sociais - pre-
tendia dar aos restos decadentes das idéias antigas um rápido enterro,
conforme exigia o decoro, e fazer nascer em seu lugar um sistema cujo
fundamento salutar derivaria das ciências empíricas. O positivismo
lógico disseminou-se bem além do pequeno aposento despojado onde
o grupo se reunia e influenciou profundamente a posição filosófica de
filósofos e cientistas sociais e da natureza, muitos dos quais nem sequer
tinham consciência de possuir uma posição filosófica. Mas a preferên-
cia pela ausência de uma posição especificamente filosófica foi um dos
pontos principais enfatizados pelos positivistas lógicos. Tratava-se de
* Jean Cocteau escreveu em 1926 que "A pior tragédia para um poeta é ser admirado
embora mal entendido". Para um lógico, especialmente um com a delicada psicologia
de Gõdel, a tragédia é talvez ainda pior.
64CAPÍTULO 1. UM PLATÔNICO ENTRE POSITIVISTAS
uma posição filosófica que visava abolir todas as posições filosóficas, o
que ao leitor pode parecer paradoxal.
O positivismo lógico é, às vezes, denominado "empirismo lógico" ou
"empirismo radical". O empirismo tradicional, exemplificado pelas
idéias do filósofo escocês David Hume ( 1711-76), procurou delinear os
limites do conhecimento. Havia, por um lado, o tipo de perguntas res-
pondíveis pelo raciocínio a priori; estas, de acordo com Hume, não
tinham importância ontológica. Não passavam de verdades conceituais
que nada nos informam sobre como o mundo realmente é; apenas refle-
tem relações abstratas entre conceitos. Hume chamou-as de "associa-
ções de idéias': Assim, a verdade de que os solteiros não são casados é
análoga à verdade de que os fantasmas são espíritos desencarnados dos
mortos e à verdade de que o sorvete sem gordura não tem gordura. Cada
uma é verdadeira a despeito da existência ou não de seu sujeito: soltei-
ros, fantasmas ou sorvete sem gordura. Por outro lado, existem propo-
sições que vão além do meramente conceitual e buscam descrever a
natureza do mundo, dizer quais coisas existem e quais as propriedades
das coisas e as relações entre elas. De acordo com o empirismo tradicio-
nal, quaisquer proposições que tratem da natureza do mundo- Hume
chamou-as de "questões de fato e existência'' - só podem ser provadas
verdadeiras ou falsas por meios empíricos. Algum tipo de prova é indis-
pensável. A faculdade da razão a priori pode nos informar como os con-
ceitos se relacionam uns com os outros, mas não pode informar como é
o mundo além dos nossos conceitos. Para esse tipo de conhecimento,
precisamos de algum tipo de contato experimental com o mundo.
Recorrendo a um exemplo favorito, vejamos a questão da existência
de Deus, definido como um Ser transcenden

pressing against my arm. All this seems to be so evident as to be hardly worth stating,
except in answer to a man who doubts whether I know anything. Yet all this may be
reasonably doubted, and all of it requires much careful discussion before we can be sure
that we have stated it in a form that is wholly true.
To make our difficulties plain, let us concentrate attention on the table. To the eye it is
oblong, brown and shiny, to the touch it is smooth and cool and hard; when I tap it, it
gives out a wooden sound. Any one else who sees and feels and hears the table will agree
with this description, so that it might seem as if no difficulty would arise; but as soon as
we try to be more precise our troubles begin. Although I believe that the table is 'really' of
the same colour all over, the parts that reflect the light look much brighter than the other
parts, and some parts look white because of reflected light. I know that, if I move, the
parts that reflect the light will be different, so that the apparent distribution of colours on
the table will change. It follows that if several people are looking at the table at the same
moment, no two of them will see exactly the same distribution of colours, because no two
can see it from exactly the same point of view, and any change in the point of view
makes some change in the way the light is reflected.
For most practical purposes these differences are unimportant, but to the painter they are
all-important: the painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the
colour which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things
as they appear. Here we have already the beginning of one of the distinctions that cause
most trouble in philosophy -- the distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality', between
what things seem to be and what they are. The painter wants to know what things seem to
be, the practical man and the philosopher want to know what they are; but the
philosopher's wish to know this is stronger than the practical man's, and is more troubled
by knowledge as to the difficulties of answering the question.
To return to the table. It is evident from what we have found, that there is no colour
which preeminently appears to be the colour of the table, or even of any one particular
part of the table -- it appears to be of different colours from different points of view, and
there is no reason for regarding some of these as more really its colour than others. And
we know that even from a given point of view the colour will seem different by artificial
light, or to a colour-blind man, or to a man wearing blue spectacles, while in the dark
there will be no colour at all, though to touch and hearing the table will be unchanged.
This colour is not something which is inherent in the table, but something depending
upon the table and the spectator and the way the light falls on the table. When, in
ordinary life, we speak of the colour of the table, we only mean the sort of colour which it
will seem to have to a normal spectator from an ordinary point of view under usual
conditions of light. But the other colours which appear under other conditions have just
as good a right to be considered real; and therefore, to avoid favouritism, we are
compelled to deny that, in itself, the table has any one particular colour.
The same thing applies to the texture. With the naked eye one can see the gram, but
otherwise the table looks smooth and even. If we looked at it through a microscope, we
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4THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY
should see roughnesses and hills and valleys, and all sorts of differences that are
imperceptible to the naked eye. Which of these is the 'real' table? We are naturally
tempted to say that what we see through the microscope is more real, but that in turn
would be changed by a still more powerful microscope. If, then, we cannot trust what we
see with the naked eye, why should we trust what we see through a microscope? Thus,
again, the confidence in our senses with which we began deserts us.
The shape of the table is no better. We are all in the habit of judging as to the 'real' shapes
of things, and we do this so unreflectingly that we come to think we actually see the real
shapes. But, in fact, as we all have to learn if we try to draw, a given thing looks different
in shape from every different point of view. If our table is 'really' rectangular, it will look,
from almost all points of view, as if it had two acute angles and two obtuse angles. If
opposite sides are parallel, they will look as if they converged to a point away from the
spectator; if they are of equal length, they will look as if the nearer side were longer. All
these things are not commonly noticed in looking at a table, because experience has
taught us to construct the 'real' shape from the apparent shape, and the 'real' shape is what
interests us as practical men. But the 'real' shape is not what we see; it is something
inferred from what we see. And what we see is constantly changing in shape as we, move
about the room; so that here again the senses seem not to give us the truth about the table
itself, but only about the appearance of the table.
Similar difficulties arise when we consider the sense of touch. It is true that the table
always gives us a sensation of hardness, and we feel that it resists pressure. But the
sensation we obtain depends upon how hard we press the table and also upon what part of
the body we press with; thus the various sensations due to various pressures or various
parts of the body cannot be supposed to reveal directly any definite property of the table,
but at most to be signs of some property which perhaps causes all the sensations, but is
not actually apparent in any of them. And the same applies still more obviously to the
sounds which can be elicited by rapping the table.
Thus it becomes evident that the real table, if there is one, is not the same as what we
immediately experience by sight or touch or hearing. The real table, if there is one, is not
immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately
known. Hence, two very difficult questions at once arise; namely, (1) Is there a real table
at all? (2) If so, what sort of object can it be?
It will help us in considering these questions to have a few simple terms of which the
meaning is definite and clear. Let us give the name of 'sense-data' to the things that are
immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardnesses,
roughnesses, and so on. We shall give the name 'sensation' to the experience of being
immediately aware of these things. Thus, whenever we see a colour, we have a sensation
of the colour, but the colour itself is a sense-datum, not a sensation. The colour is that of
which we are immediately aware, and the awareness itself is the sensation. It is plain that
if we are to know anything about the table, it must be by means of the sense-data --
brown colour, oblong shape, smoothness, etc. -- which we associate with the table; but,
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5THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY
for the reasons which have been given, we cannot say that the table is the se