ON HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING
to make the difference often between life and death.
If
we use the term "history" to designate the realm of human
affairs, then the fundamental question is whether scientific method can
be
applied to history.
If
it can, then we should not believe that every–
thing which is logically possible or even imaginable is therefore histori–
cally possible. At the same time we free ourselves from the notion that
anything in history is guaranteed or compelled to happen. We can
recognize that in certain situations the outcome of a state of affairs
depends
in
some respects upon what human beings do or leave undone.
And this recognition is perfectly compatible with the realization that in
other respects and in other situations, what the future will be does not
depend upon anything human beings, as they are presently constituted,
can do even though it still remains true that the future is not completely
determined. Other things may affect it.
From this
point
of view the concepts of
historical
necessity and
historical
impossibility are not only legitimate but indispensable provided
we interpret them as expressing certain limiting notions-the compound–
ing of probabilities and improbabilities which justify us in saying that
one event is overwhelmingly likely and its opposite overwhelming un–
likely. Most historical events, fortunately, are neither historically neces–
sary nor historically impossible. In the natural world we use expressions
like "physically necessary" and "physically impossible" in an analogous
sense.
The recognition that the logic of scientific inquiry in history is
identical with the logic of scientific inquiry in nature is not gainsaid
by the obvious fact that we know far less about history than we do
about nature. We know far less about meteorology than we do about
physics. Historical terms are ill-defined and the general laws on the
basis of which we make predictions are vague and unrelated to each
other. And yet so many of them are relevant to historical situations
that
the task of the historian becomes far more complex than that of the
natural scientist. But once a definite historical problem is formulated, a
beginning can
be
made. Despite our methodological doubts we recognize
that some historical explanations and some predictions about human
affairs are better warranted than others. When we seek to make explicit
why one historical account or prediction is more adequate or truer than
another, it is always in terms of a common pattern of inquiry employed
in any field where the distinction between truth and fiction has a
meaning.
One of the most questionable aspects of Popper's procedure is lump-
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