Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Emergente Wahrscheinlichkeit (emergent probability): obere Klinge einer kritischen Geschichtsphilosophie; statistische, klassische Gesetze; inverse Einsicht

Kurzinhalt: Lonergan's proposal, then, for an answer to the problems encountered in the two schools of the philosophy of history will be that an overall science of man will develop a set of anticipations operative in the writing of history, that ...

Textausschnitt: 6.3 Emergent Probability as an 'Upper Blade' For a Critical Philosophy of History

28/6 Lonergan's proposal, then, for an answer to the problems encountered in the two schools of the philosophy of history will be that an overall science of man will develop a set of anticipations operative in the writing of history, that this science of man will be based in a theory of cognition, that the structure to the explanations in this science of man will be rooted in the operative structures of acts of knowing in both the classical and the statistical sciences,1 and that such a science will recognize that historical events are transformed significantly with changes in the sciences of man which ground the popularly held anticipations of culture. (175; Fs) (notabene)

29/6 Like Huizinga, Lonergan conceives the distinctive, constitutive element of human history, as written, to be acts of meaning, acts of understanding, judging and deciding. And, like Huizinga, Lonergan recognizes that such acts occur within a context or a horizon of anticipations, goals, projects, values, habits, routines, skills, roles, hopes, fears, drives, biases, etc., etc. Lonergan would agree that what is selected for a study by the historian, most usually corresponds to the concerns of a later age. And this foreign horizon of concern, far from constituting an obstacle to writing history, is its condition of possibility.2 But Lonergan also recognizes that the orientation of the act of writing history is to transcend the limitations of this later horizon and to approach a correspondence or identity with an intelligibility immanent in emergent historical process. Consequently the historian's task is to achieve an ecstasis, or a standing out from his or her original horizon of concerns, and gradually to begin operating within a horizon of anticipations that is appropriate to the age or to the thinkers being studied. Thus while the historian chooses to study what he or she, in his or her own culture, deems significant, the study need not remain locked into the cultural horizon of the historian's own age.3 (175; Fs)

30/6 Like the covering-law modelists, Lonergan conceives acts mediated by meaning as events that occur in accordance with the fulfillment of an appropriate range of conditions and he conceives such events and conditions to be of classes. Classes of events recur and associated with this recurrence there is to be discerned an intelligibility that can be formulated as a 'law.' Laws are statistical as well as classical and it is the statistical laws that grasp and intelligibility that is operative in ranges of non-systematic aggregates of converging conditions.4 History does not seek to explain events in their generality but in their particularity. Rather, it is psychology, sociology, economics, political science, and the like that explain events as instances of classes. History is interested in the particular, the concrete.5 And so explanation in history will require an understanding of the classical laws operative in the recurring events and schemes and of the statistical laws associated with the fulfilling conditions for the more or less probable emergence of such events and schemes. But beyond these history will require the inverse insight that grasps individual occurrences as non-systematic divergences from statistical laws. At any historical moment a number of things possibly could have been going forward and at the moment the probabilities associated with the recurrence of appropriate ranges of conditions would narrow down that number. But what actually occurred did so in accordance with an aggregate of converging conditions that constituted a non-systematic divergence from the probabilities. And so while historical explanation will require an appeal to laws, such laws will not suffice to explain the historical events.6 (175f; Fs) (notabene)

31/6 Thus Lonergan agrees with Dray that the historian is interested in the concrete and the particular and that the concrete and the particular is not to be understood completely in terms of classical laws. But while a 'colligation' is a possible account, Lonergan would draw upon the classical and statistical laws to narrow down the possibilities and to estimate the f-probabilities associated with a range of v-probable occurrences in an approach towards grasping a v-probable intelligibility immanent in historical process.7 (176; Fs)

32/6 With Gallic and White, Lonergan recognizes that there are overall structures or patterns operative in the oscillations between progress and decline, that these patterns conceivably could be classified, and that such patterns are surely operative in the imagination as anticipations of the long range course of one's life and that of one's culture and civilization. Lonergan would recognize careful classification of such anticipatory structures to be powerfully relevant to an understanding of a historical age and to one's understanding of oneself. But unlike White, Lonergan recognizes understanding to intend something more than an order in the mind or a structure to language. And Lonergan would argue that inasmuch as White intends to do something more than present an account of the structure of his own mind (inasmuch as White makes a historical claim about nineteenth century philosophers and historians) his own project reflects Lonergan's rejection of this narrower view of cognition. (176; Fs)

33/6 Finally, Lonergan would add that historical events are transformed significantly in accordance with transformations in culturally operative theories on humanity and on historical process. As people in cultures live and act in accordance with anticipations about the nature of humanity, the structures of history, and the dynamics of progress and decline - anticipations which are shaped, generally, by the historians and theoreticians of the current or previous ages - their historical living comes to reflect the structure of such anticipations. The historian, equipped with the tools for an analysis of sciences of man and philosophies of history, will be in a position to understand the course of historical events in terms of transformations in culturally operative views drawn from such extant human sciences and philosophies of history. And a historical writing which reflects any advance upon the status quo in the science of man and the philosophy of history will have a profound effect on the future flow of events when it becomes widespread in the operative anticipations of culture. It is to this end of working out an advance upon current philosophies of history that emergent probability is proposed. (177; Fs)