Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Fachgeschichte (technical history); Collingwood; Unterschied zu occasional history

Kurzinhalt: That type of historical work I venture to call technical history ... There are points at which that technique can be applied; but there are equally the lacunae ...

Textausschnitt: 55b History as a scientific subject had its principal development in the nineteenth century, say, since von Ranke; and I will now try to suggest the notion of technical history. (Fs)

55c History begins as belief; the historian is not at all places at all times. He does not see and hear everything, he needs the reports of other people, and he takes the word of others for what happened elsewhere and at other times. There can arise conflicting testimonies, and in a conflict between what the witnesses say and what the historian believes could really happen, there will arise a critique of witnesses - of what they could know, how accurate their knowledge is likely to be, how truthful they are, whether they have ulterior motives, and so forth. However, as Collingwood points out in a fable in his The Idea of History, the historian need not be simply a believer. Collingwood composed a detective story in which all the witnesses were lying and all the clues were planted and yet the detective could figure out what really happened. He was not believing any of the witnesses, he was not trusting any of the clues, yet he could determine just what happened, who was the criminal.1 (Fs)

56a With that point reached, history turns over from a collection of beliefs to something analogous to an empirical science. It is concerned not with testimonies but, if I may use the word of Professor Renier, with 'traces.'2 Everything that exists in the present and had its origin in the past constitutes a trace of the past. It may be a document; it may be anything else in the way of ruins, buildings, coins, inscriptions, folkways, traditions, and so forth. All that comes from the past into the present is so much raw material. To the historian it is data, it constitutes data, and as a datum it is valid. It is irrelevant as yet whether it is going to be classified as something truthful or as a lie, as a genuine moment of the past or as a fake. That will depend upon how we classify it, what period it will be attributed to, what value will be placed upon it. All of that will depend upon the judgment of the historian. Just as the physicist considers all the colors he sees in the spectroscope and all the measurements obtained, and so on, as so much data in which he seeks an understanding and as the start of the hypothetico-deductive process, so in somewhat similar fashion the historian is not simply a believer of what other people have told him, a shrewd believer sizing up, accepting some, discounting others, but something like a scientist seeking an understanding of all the traces of the past that are existing into the present. (Fs)

56b That understanding reached by the historian is a thing that develops as do the empirical sciences. If one historian interprets the data a certain way, another, by pointing to data that have been overlooked or misinterpreted, can challenge his conclusions and set up a new view on the subject, which can be a progressively improving interpretation of what happened in the past. However, history differs from the empirical sciences in two ways. First of all, historical understanding is not of general laws. It is of the particular and the concrete. Consequently, following upon this first difference, it is not possible for the historian to check his understanding of this case by appealing directly to other cases. If the physicist says that the ratio between the angle of incidence and the angle of refraction of a ray of light is some constant which he applies to this particular case, well, he can appeal to all similar cases to check his interpretation, his account of the phenomena. The historian is interpreting just this particular case; other cases may all differ; he does not have the type of check which the empirical scientist has. On the other hand, he does have something similar insofar as the historical interpretation of a period, of all the particular cases in a given section of space-time, has to present something of a coherent picture; an interpretation of one set of events has to be able to fit in with another closely related set of events; so there is a fair analogy between the understanding the historian seeks of the traces of the past and the procedure of the empirical scientist. That type of historical work I venture to call technical history. (Fs)

[...]

58b On the other hand, technical history has its weakness. That type of interlocking of the data is not something that can be applied along the whole historical continuum. There are points at which that technique can be applied; but there are equally the lacunae, and the lacunae can occupy many more places than the points. Consequently, there remains a permanent temptation for the historian to fill in the blanks, and there is a fundamental problem in historical method with regard to these periods in which there are some data but not enough to give you that interlocking of a whole series of considerations that pins down the meaning of the event. Herbert Butterfield takes the stand that history is a limited undertaking.1 We do what we can; we do not undertake to answer all questions; and that is pretty much the common sense of the historian. He will indicate his various degrees of confidence in the exactitude of what he is saying, point out that he is not quite sure of that, and so forth. One does not hesitate to say one does not know, is not sure. (Fs)