The Quest for Causal Laws.
One factor which, from
the Enlightenment onwards, exercised a
pervasive in-
fluence upon the development of
historical speculation
was the progress of the natural sciences. The dis-
coveries of men like Galileo, Kepler, and
Newton had
apparently opened the way to unlimited advance in
the
exploration of nature, showing how ranges of phys-
ical phenomena, often of the most diverse kinds, could
be
systematically accommodated and unified within
schemes of vast explanatory
and predictive power. It
was, furthermore, a feature of the theories and
laws
propounded that they had been evolved within the
setting of a
mechanistic rather than a teleological
conception of the universe: enquiry
was guided by the
aim of determining the detectable conditions under
which phenomena occurred, the uniformities of se-
quence which they exhibited in precisely specifiable
circumstances, rather than by considerations involving
the supposition that
they were activated by purposive
principles mysteriously embedded in the
structure of
the cosmos. It is not surprising that the possibility of
applying similar approaches and techniques to the
study of psychological
and social phenomena should
have occurred to thinkers to whom it appeared
un-
reasonable and obscurantist to
assume the existence of
an absolute gulf separating the realm of nature
from
the realm of mind. Why should the thought and be-
havior of human beings not be subject to universal and
necessary regularities comparable to those that gov-
erned physical reality? At the individual level this
attitude
was to find expression in such “materialist”
works as
Holbach's Système de la nature (1770) and
La Mettrie's L'Homme machine (1748),
as well as in
the “associationist” psychological
doctrines of eigh-
teenth- and
nineteenth-century British empiricism. Its
most spectacular and influential
manifestations, how-
ever, took place within the
province of social theory:
here a determined effort was made to lay the
founda-
tions of a historical science
which would not only rival
the natural sciences in richness and scope but
would
also provide a firm theoretical base from which to
conduct
large-scale projects of social reorganization
and reform. The practical
advantages that would ac-
crue from a proper
understanding of the fundamental
determinants of history were seldom far
from the minds
of those who undertook to achieve it.
If causal laws were operative within history, what
form did they take and
how were they to be discov-
ered? As a number
of recent critics have been at pains
to point out, the enthusiastic
advocacy of a scientific
approach to human affairs was not always matched
by
a corresponding grasp of the actual nature of scientific
method and
inference. Thus some theorists were apt
to rely upon a rather naive mode of
induction by
simple enumeration in arriving at their conclusions;
one
consequence of this was a proneness to overlook
or leave out of account
possible counter-examples to
the principles or generalizations they
supposed them-
selves to have established.
Again, it is arguable that
the interpretations they put upon certain
crucial con-
cepts were on occasions open to
objection. Karl Pop-
per, for instance, has
maintained that the term “law”
was not infrequently
used incorrectly, being misappro-
priated to apply to what were in fact no more than
particular trends
or long-term processes; insofar as
these were regarded as possessing some
sort of inherent
necessity, it was perhaps partly due to the survival
of
teleological preconceptions which, though openly re-
pudiated, nonetheless continued to exert a covert in-
fluence. Yet another persistent feature of
scientifically-
inspired
theories of history was the restriction they
imposed upon the range of
conditions considered to
be basically or “decisively”
relevant: it was assumed
that the fundamental laws of historical
development
should be formulable in a manner that gave priority
to
factors of some specific type—race, environment,
and the growth
of knowledge or technology being
among those variously accorded this
privileged status.
As a result many of the theories in question were
monistic in character, presupposing a sharp contrast
between, on the one
hand, merely superficial or “ap-
parent” causative agencies and, on the other, deep-
lying forces to whose operation the
general shape and
direction taken by significant social phenomena must
in the last analysis be ascribed. Yet here, once more,
it was often far
from clear what justification, empirical
or otherwise, had been offered for introducing distinc-
tions and limitations of the kind
referred to. Some of
these tendencies, and their accompanying
difficulties,
are illustrated in the works of two nineteenth-century
thinkers whose writings made a profound impact upon
their age: H. T. Buckle
and Karl Marx.
Buckle had been impressed by his reading of Auguste
Comte and J. S. Mill,
themselves both wedded to the
conception of a social science, and he
regarded it as
a scandal that so little had previously been done
“to-
wards discovering the
principles which govern the
character and destiny of nations.”
In particular, he
heaped ridicule upon doctrines—such as those
ascrib-
ing to men a power of undetermined
free choice—
which in his view had hindered the creation of
a
genuinely scientific interpretation of history. Against
obfuscatory
and “metaphysical” dogmas of this kind
he affirmed
the “undeviating regularity” with which
human actions
followed upon antecedent circum-
stances,
and he set out to provide a detailed account
of the fashion in which what
he called “three vast
agents”—climate,
food, and soil—combined to deter-
mine the original character and evolution of different
peoples and
cultures. Buckle's erudition was consid-
erable and his deployment of it to substantiate his
claims was not
devoid of value, leading other historians
to take seriously matters that
had not received the
attention they deserved. Yet what he said can
hardly
be considered to have fulfilled his own ambitious aspi-
rations. His generalizations were
conspicuously lacking
in precision, and his denial that such factors as
govern-
ment and religion could properly
be regarded as
“prime movers of human affairs”
functioned more as
a prejudice than as an argued thesis. Moreover,
having
proved to his satisfaction that a particular condition
was
necessary to the production of some social out-
come, he was liable to pass without further ado to the
conclusion
that it was sufficient as well. Thus his con-
duct of the enterprise he had undertaken seemed often
to be vitiated
by logical confusions in addition to the
methodological inadequacies it
displayed.
Marx's conception of history was subtler, and in
general has proved to be
far more fertile in its conse-
quences for
historical writing and research. Roughly
speaking, it involved the
contention that the final
determinant of historical movement was to be
found,
not in the ideas men entertained, but in their material
activities and methods of production; it was the ma-
nipulative interaction between man and his environ-
ment—the ways in which men
worked upon it in order
to create their means of subsistence and to satisfy
their
developing needs and wants—that was responsible for
the course taken by human affairs, necessitating the
form assumed by
phenomena in other departments of
social life and experience. Marx and his
followers were
thereby led to distinguish between the economic
“base” of society (consisting in the productive
forces
together with the class alignments these forces gave
rise to)
and the ideological “superstructure” (compris-
ing religion, ethics, political
institutions, systems of
law, and so forth), the latter being essentially
the
product of the former. History could thus be seen as
owing its
momentum to changes that took place in
human productive techniques and to
corresponding
movements and conflicts within the social structure:
as
Marx and Engels wrote in their German Ideology
(1845-46), “men, developing their material production
and their
material intercourse, alter, along with this
their real existence, their
thinking and the products
of their thinking” (p. 38). Such a
theory possessed a
challenging originality and economy; it appeared
both
to illuminate hitherto uncharted ranges of historical
phenomena
and also to set in a new light, at times
even to undermine, such
traditional modes of explana-
tion as those
that emphasized individual plans and
projects and the beliefs or ideals
that inspired them.
Yet, despite the insights it undoubtedly embodied,
the
very comprehensiveness and neatness of the Marxian
interpretation
was felt by some to mask a variety of
problems concerning its validity and
its application in
practice to the material it was designed to
explain.
How far, for example, was it possible to describe or
identify
the factors assigned to the economic base or
“foundation” without introducing considerations of a
political or juristic nature? What exactly were the
grounds for asserting
that ethical or political doctrines
were essentially expressions of the
interests of econom-
ically determined
classes, and how was such an hy-
pothesis to
be empirically tested? Or again, was it
legitimate to treat the role of
individual personalities
in history as cavalierly as Engels, in particular,
some-
times implied? More generally, could
it not be argued
that the progressivist optimism, implicit in the
Marxian
notion of history as moving inexorably forward towards
the
creation of social forms that would render possible
the complete
realization of human potentialities, owed
more to the postulates of the
Idealist metaphysic Marx
had absorbed in his youth than to any entailed by
a
strictly scientific methodology? It was one thing (such
critics
protested) to stress the importance of economic
factors and to show how
these might exert an unsus-
pected but
nonetheless crucial influence upon historical
change; it was surely quite
another to suggest that,
once their significance had been appreciated, the
entire
historical process would present itself as conforming
to a
necessary pattern in such a way that future phases
of its development could
be unerringly predicted.
