Historical Theory 2009-10-116: 23 Reading 23 comments 0 font size: the role of universal laws in history, hempel.

(The theory of scientific interpretation refers to the scientific interpretation of events)

Hempel thinks that history has no particularity compared with other sciences. In history and natural science, universal laws play the same role.

(but it does not deny "special historical laws")

Universal law is a statement about universal conditions, which can be confirmed or overturned through appropriate experience.

"universal hypothesis"

The main function of universal laws in natural science is to state the relationship between events through explanation and prediction.

Both historical science and natural science explain their subjects according to universal concepts.

Only by pointing out which universal laws link "various causes" with "results" can we explain that a group of events has produced an event that needs to be explained (causal interpretation mode).

Only through this rule of thumb can we get a scientific explanation: a group of specific events C 1, C2 ... triggered event e at a certain time and place.

Based on the general empirical hypothesis, we distinguish between true interpretation and false interpretation (historical mission, destiny takes a hand).

Interpretation and prediction.

To judge whether a given explanation is reliable, we should first rebuild the explanatory arguments as completely as possible, find out what the hypothesis of the explanation is, and evaluate its scope and basis.

Successful prediction can be achieved through unreliable theory.

The wrong method came to the right conclusion.

Understanding ("empathy") is different from science, and history, like other fields of empirical science, explains phenomena by incorporating them into universal rules of experience.

When historians provide explanations, predictions, explanations and judgments, the general assumptions used come from all fields of scientific research.

There is no universal explanation. Although history is similar, it will not happen again and there is no universality.

Historians do use empirical scientific methods to explain history, but in the process of explanation, we can't rule out the subjective factors of historians, which have infiltrated their own ideological spirit, so they are both scientific and unscientific.

Can history be objective? Walsh

Walsh put forward the distinction between "speculative historical philosophy" and "analytical historical philosophy" for the first time in "Introduction to Historical Philosophy".

Can historians acquire objective knowledge, and in what sense?