Why Study History? On Its Epistemic Benefits and Its Relation to the Sciences

Abstract

I try to return the focus of the philosophy of history to the nature of understanding, with a particular emphasis on Louis Mink's project of exploring how historical understanding compares to the understanding we find in the natural sciences. On the whole, I come to a conclusion that Mink almost certainly would not have liked: that the understanding offered by history has a very similar epistemic profile to the understanding offered by the sciences, a similarity that stems from the fact that both are concerned with grasping how the objects of their study are structured, or how the various elements of the things they study depend upon and relate to one another. At the same time, however, I claim that historical inquiry naturally puts us in a position to acquire further epistemic goods, including the old-fashioned epistemic good of wisdom, which is plausibly constituted by knowledge of how to live well. This is something the natural sciences cannot offer, and it is part of the reason why history is such an important form of inquiry. ***In an incisive essay published fifty years ago, Louis Mink (1966) argued that in order to appreciate what is distinctive about history as a discipline, we first need to clarify what is distinctive about the epistemology of history. In particular, he suggested, we first need to clarify how the sort of understanding offered by history differs from the understanding offered by the natural sciences. Only thus, Mink claimed, can we properly establish not just history's autonomy as a form of inquiry, but also its special importance.

Mortar and Pestle or Cooking Vessel? When Archaeology Makes Progress Through Failed Analogies

“…It is this phenomenon I want to provide an account of; when we are concerned with human beings, and thus ultimately ourselves, understanding differences seems to be particularly significant. 10 My starting point will be the account of the value of historical understanding recently proposed by Grimm (2017). Grimm argues that there is no deep difference in the 'epistemic profile' of understanding produced by natural science and history: in both cases, understanding consists in grasping how different parts of a system relate to and depend on each other.…”

On Understanding and Testimony

“…If the attitude would have been different, things would probably have developed differently. (For an enlightening analysis of the relation between understanding and possibility, see Grimm 2017. ) What about the consistency requirement?…”

The Ubiquity of Understanding: Dimensions of Understanding in the Social and Natural Sciences

“…In addition, we have to recognize that explicating the individuality of events is not merely something that we are interested in as far as human individuality is concerned. We also adopt the narrative mode within the context of evolutionary theory (trying to explain the mass extinctions of forms of life that have occurred at various times in the history of our planet), within a geological context when we try to explain the unique features of a landscape, or in the context of cosmological investigations trying to explicate unique features of our solar system (Grimm 2017; Stueber 2015).…”

“…For this very reason, philosophers of science have also argued for the epistemic value of scientific explanations by pointing out that they provide us with understanding. They allow us to see how things fit into the general scheme of things (Salmon 1998) and allow us to grasp a variety of dependency relations among the elements of the world (Grimm 2017). Finally, in contrast to the concept of knowledge, understanding seems to allow us to characterize our cognitive achievements more adequately in a flexible manner as understanding rather than knowledge does come in degrees and can be characterized as better or worse, or deep and shallow (Khalifa 2017).…”

“…I do worry though that the recent emphasis on understanding from the perspective of epistemology and philosophy of science could leave behind some of the genuine insights developed within the hermeneutic tradition in the narrow sense starting with Schleiermacher, Droysen, and Dilthey in the 19th century and further developed by Heidegger, Gadamer, Taylor, Collingwood, and Ricoeur, to name a few, in the 20th century. See however the work of Stephen Grimm (2016, 2017) who does share some of these broader interests.…”