An examination of substantive theories of historical
causation shows that
many of the problems raised by
them tend to shade into others that concern,
not so
much matters of fact, as the meaning and implications
of
various key terms or ideas. This aspect of the subject
first began to
attract widespread attention during the
latter half of the nineteenth
century, when a certain
skepticism regarding the feasibility of large-scale
in-
terpretations of the historical
process on allegedly
scientific lines set in, and when it was felt to be
neces-
sary to consider more carefully the
actual structure of
the concepts by which the explanation of
historical
phenomena was customarily attempted. It was clear,
for
instance, that the program of elevating history to
scientific status
presupposed that historical events
could be subsumed beneath laws and
hypotheses of the
type that had been employed with success at the
level
of natural phenomena. How far, though, was such an
assumption
really justified? Was it not conceivable that
the whole notion of
explanation and understanding
within the field of the human studies
precluded the
adoption of such an approach, with the consequence
that
some of the grandiose attempts which had been
made to set history upon the
“sure path of a science”
could be regarded as
mistaken in principle, the prod-
ucts of a
profound categorial confusion? In any case,
was it not reasonable to
investigate the logical charac-
ter of the
explanations which historians in practice used
before embarking on projects
whose relevance and
applicability to the subject matter of historical
enquiry
had been taken for granted not critically ascertained?
