Abstract
In this exploratory sketch, I move across the boundaries of philosophy of historiography to social science and its philosophy. If we want to answer the central question of this chapter, we need to know what types of scientific problems historians are interested in, what history is, and what mechanisms are. I sketch the most prominent theories of social mechanisms in the context of wider ontological approaches. I investigate Mario Bunge’s “Emergentist Systemism,” “Critical Realism” in the tradition of Roy Bhaskar’s influential philosophy, and Daniel Little’s “Methodological Localism.” Since it turns out that mechanisms are taken to be rather different entities, the question is only answered trivially, but some problems are suggested that need to be separated if the debate shall not end up in “mechanism talk.” It is also suggested that philosophers of historiography can find in these debates what they are normally not interested in, that is, science-oriented philosophy of history.
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Notes
- 1.
Since the above is as much to be taken literally as it is polemic and, as I have been told, easily misunderstood, I should make explicit the following claims about the academic game around philosophy of historiography. First, philosophy of historiography cannot help us in answering the first part of the question because it is not interested in what historians do, that is, it does not care at all about research conducted by historians. Most philosophy of historiography is about “narratives.” Although there are more concepts of narrative around than there are narrativist philosophers, from the view taken here, these approaches are mostly irrelevant to a philosophy of Geschichtswissenschaft. (If you have no qualms about doing so, call it “historiography.”) Scientific historians simply do not get degrees for writing pleasant narratives but for solving scientific problems, although they might gain a Nobel Prize and the attention of philosophers of historiography by painting such “narratives.” Second, philosophers of historiography cannot tell us anything about history because the ontology of history was famously buried as speculative already in the 1950s and the concept was completely moved to methodology or exchanged with “the past.” See as a paradigm Marrou (1975 [1954], p. 29): “L’histoire est la connaissance du passé humain (…).” As anybody knows, this is no accident but the result of speculative metaphysics of the one history and its course. Put in a memorable yet unclear slogan, we can thus say that official philosophy of history is not about history. A presupposition of this paper is, to the contrary of the tradition in philosophy of historiography, that the concept of history belongs to ontology anyhow. If this presupposition is wrong, the question of this chapter does not make any sense. As we will see, it is doubtful that it does.
- 2.
I use the label coined by Wan (2011a) to refer to Bunge’s system.
- 3.
For further recent literature and different traditions of thinking about social mechanisms that I will not discuss directly on this occasion although they have in part intersections with the theories that I sketch and are equally relevant, see, for example, Lawson (1997), Hedström and Swedberg (1998), Tilly et al. (2001), Barberi (2004), Bennett and George (2005), Cherkaoui (2005), Manicas (2006), Pickel (2006), Schmid (2006), Wight (2006), Elster (2007), Glynos and Howarth (2007), Kurki (2008), Moessinger (2008), Elder-Vass (2010), Demeulenaere (2011), Wan (2011a).
- 4.
This chapter might not be without interest to historians because these philosophies have hardly received attention in philosophy of historiography, which is my point of departure here, and they have not been discussed among historians themselves, although they deal with questions permanently discussed in their circles. Exceptions are to be found in (McLennan 1981; Gibbon 1989; Lloyd 1986) in the case of Roy Bhaskar’s work. Bunge’s work has been ignored so far, perhaps because of his claim that historiology is the most rigorous of all the social sciences and due to his robust ontological and epistemological realism; see, for example, Bunge (1985, 1988, 1998a).
- 5.
- 6.
The basic slogan of this ontology is therefore (Bunge 2004a, p. 191): “everything in the universe is, was, or will be a system or a component of one.”
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
On the problem concerning the boundaries of social systems, see (Bunge 1992a).
- 10.
- 11.
We should note here that there is a family of concepts around the notion of emergence in ES that should be distinguished at this point. Emergent properties are, of course, properties (see below). Emergence is a process in which an emergent property comes into existence. An emergent is a thing possessing some emergent property.
- 12.
- 13.
On this account, expressions such as “historical events,” “historical processes,” “historical facts,” or “historical societies” are pleonasms and talk of “historicity” is trivial; cf., Bunge and Mahner (1997, p. 20).
- 14.
Of course, in ES everything whatsoever has a history, whether it happens to be a boot maker or a coffee maker; cf., Bunge (1977, p. 255).
- 15.
See Veyne (1996, 153f.), who happens to be a historian: “La France ne fait pas la guerre, car elle n’existe pas réellement; seul existent des Français (…). Pour un historien comme pour tout homme, ce qui est proprement réel, ce sont les individus.” Sztompka (1991, 188), who is a sociologist, does not nod: “[T]he army is more than soldiers, a corporation more than all those employed, and Poland more than all Poles.”
- 16.
For reasons of space and complexity we cannot here discuss the whole story and this should remind us of the circumstance that my reading of Bunge is far from infallible. But first of all, Bunge has suggested for a long time that not every determinant of change is a causal determinant (Bunge 1982, 2009 [1959]). The structure of a social system (macro property) and even its subset of spatial relations, for instance, in a production line as a sub-system of a factory, might determine the output of the system (macro property). But in ES this is far from stating that these relations cause actions or changes in the properties of social systems, though they determine the possible state of the system before and while causation is going on through people’s hands. In some examples Bunge (1996, p. 280; 2000a) talks of macro-causation in terms which might turn out to be problematic, for example, when it is suggested that actions are causally stimulated or constrained by the place the individual holds in a system. Of course, this is not problematic if one remembers that such descriptions are most often short for complex interactions and their patterns, though the place or role an individual holds in a system is in ES emergent and systemic.
- 17.
The examples are taken from Bunge’s work.
- 18.
A quick look at the development of Bunge’s thinking on mechanisms and mechanismic explanation suggests that he started off with a theory that tended tacitly to conflate these categories, whereas his long-lived project of systems ontology lead to their strict separation yet systematization. See Bunge (2009a [1959], 1965, 1967, 1968, 1983, 1998b). If one is to believe Wan (2011a), it seems that the current literature on mechanisms moves in the opposite direction.
- 19.
On Bunge’s concept of function, see Bunge and Mahner (2001).
- 20.
Or more formally (Bunge 2006, p. 131; cf. 2004a; 2010): “Definition 1: If σ denotes a system of kind Σ, then (1) the totality of processes (or functions) in σ over the period T is π(σ) = The ordered sequence of states of σ over T; (2) the essential mechanism (or specific function) in σ over the period T, that is, M(σ) = πs(s) ⊆ π(s), is the totality of processes that occur exclusively in σ and its conspecifics during T. Definition 2: A social mechanism is a mechanism of a social system or part of it.”
- 21.
Perfect knowledge of a system would also include its history and its laws; see Bunge (1979a, p. 8). The reader will have noticed that mechanisms have been included in the ideal model of a system in Bunge’s philosophy fairly recently, although he is thinking about mechanisms since the 1950s.
- 22.
- 23.
See Bhaskar (1978, p. 51): “The world consists of things, not events.” See also Bhaskar (1978, 47): “The world consists of mechanisms not events.”
- 24.
See Bhaskar (1994, p. 74): “The human world is an irreducible and causally efficacious dependent mode of matter.”
- 25.
On Bhaskar’s emergentism in comparison to that of Bunge, see Kaidesoja (2009).
- 26.
See also Bhaskar (1978, p. 85): “Societies, people and machines are not collectivities, wholes or aggregates of simpler or smaller constituents.”
- 27.
- 28.
- 29.
- 30.
The background of this ontology is of course an anti-positivist stance in form of the hypothesis that “the real” is not exhausted by perceptions of events or events, especially “[s]ociety is not a mass of separable events and sequences” (1979, p. 68). These assumptions are at the heart of the three ontological domains of CR (1978): “the real” (structures, powers, totalities etc.), “the actual” (events), and “the empirical” (observed events).
- 31.
See Bhaskar (1989, p. 10) reminiscent of Marx: “In the constant conjunction form history grinds to a halt in the eternalized present. History is what there has been or is elsewhere but is no longer here now.”
- 32.
See also another classic formulation by Bhaskar (1978, p. 50): “[T]he generative mechanisms of nature exist as the causal powers of things.”
- 33.
- 34.
If we read “act as generative mechanisms” as “resulting in actual processes,” then we might already here get the hypothesis that mechanisms are processes, though this seems to be against the spirit of the letter. We get that result in the next footnote.
- 35.
To round up the story, we have to add here that according to Bhaskar (1994, 257f.), processes or rhythms also have powers, and according to Hartwig (2007, p. 189), events might also “function as mechanisms,” which seems to amount to the claim that events possess powers of their own beyond the powers that are grounded in or emergent from the structure or essence of the thing that undergoes a change in the event. For short, events and processes might also be powerful dispositional mechanisms.
- 36.
For example, Wight (2006, p. 31), affiliated to the tradition of CR, writes of “the causal power of mechanisms.”
- 37.
Cf. Kurki (2008, p. 233).
- 38.
- 39.
On the more narrow CR conception of society, it does not consist of individuals or groups or some such circumstances but of internal relations: “A relation aRb is internal if and only if a would not be what it is essentially unless it were related to b in the way that it is.” See Bhaskar (1993, 10); see, also Bhaskar (1994, 75; 1979, 32, 54). This theory has implications for the philosophy of social change (Bhaskar 1979, 52): “In social life only relations endure.”
- 40.
Here we also have to admit that the story is far more complex. There has been a discussion about this point in CR that resulted in the acceptance of social powers or dispositions that do not just exist as exercised or actualized powers. Cf., Porpora 2007.
- 41.
See Bhaskar (1978, p. 51): “Most things are complex objects, in virtue of which they possess an ensemble of tendencies, liabilities and powers.”
- 42.
To grant “unobservables – such as ideas, rules and discourses,” a causal role, which seem to be “non-agent-like factors,” Kurki (2008, pp. 170–174) frames the concept of an “ontological object” that is not supposed to be a “‘thing’” (ibid. p. 169). Contrary to this, Kaidesoja (2007) argues that something like a Bungean complex thing is necessary to ascribe something a power and wants to correct CR in this direction.
- 43.
- 44.
For the claim that money has an essence, see Bhaskar (1978, p. 88).
- 45.
- 46.
As far as I can see, Little quotes only Bhaskar’s “Realist Theory of Science,” in which the TMSA was not developed; cf. Little (2011, p. 278).
- 47.
To avoid misunderstanding, one should distinguish two claims under the heading social causation. The first is the claim that social macro stuff causes individual action. The second is that there is social macro-macro-causation whether through action or not; cf., already Sztompka (1991, p. 58). Of course, one could deny both claims. The easiest way to deny CR and ML styled social causation is to claim that “there are no structures” (Harré 2009, p. 138).
- 48.
As is well known in CR, the sociologist Margaret Archer (1995) formulated a similar theory.
- 49.
Although, as far as I can see, there is no concept analogous to structurally emergent properties in ES that accounts theoretically for this claim in ML. But this concept would not fit in here anyway because ML institutions or structures are, as it seems, not Bungean things or systems.
- 50.
A difference to Bunge’s ontology is remarkable at this point, given that social states can be found neither in individuals’ brains nor in individual actions according to ES (Bunge 1996, p. 45). Whereas in ES poking one’s nose is not a social fact but an individual one, though poking another’s nose or each other’s noses are social facts, in ML the former is a social fact and a social action, as is eating breakfast cereals or smoking for oneself in private, since we have somehow acquired every taste or preference by someone; cf. Little (2007, p. 351f.).
- 51.
To be more exact, Little writes (2007, p. 360, emphasis added): ML “is not equivalent to methodological individualism or reductionism because it admits that social arrangements and circumstances affect individual action. For it is entirely likely that a microfoundational account of the determinants of individual action will include reference to social relations, norms, structures, cognitive frameworks, etc.”
- 52.
In ES this would be expressed by the claim that social systems (e.g., families) are as real as their members, face a social environment and might be the components of higher-level systems (e.g., villages), whereas it is apparently unclear what a village is in ML, given that it seems to be rather odd to say that it is a set of opportunities or a system of rules.
- 53.
Let us take the risk to pose some naïve questions: Which is the disposition or power of, say, a mentality? Is a mentality, or a norm (or what have you), a property? If yes, of what? If it is not a property of something, where is it floating? In a different context, Sztompka (1991, p. 23) has seen clearly the problem we seem to face: “In modern sociology one may find such fashionable and influential notions as ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu), ‘historicity’ (Touraine), ‘figurations’ (Elias), ‘mobilization’ (Etzioni), ‘anomie’ (Merton), ‘duality of structure’ (Giddens), ‘agency’ (Archer) – and many others. It is not easy to say what exactly the referents of these concepts are, what kinds of objects are described, because clearly they are neither people nor systems.”
- 54.
See the quote in note 51. Causation might be one thing, explanation quite another. To say the same more carefully, one should be careful not to slide into an ontological misinterpretation of the famous “Thomas Theorem,” which says “If men define situations as real they are real in their consequences” (quoted in Sztompka 1991, 83, emphasis added). Of course, there might be nothing social beyond or behind the heads of people that has “powers” or the former consequences, that is, that causes actions or social changes. Because of such worries Boudon (2010, 23) calls powers or causes such as mentalities or social structures “forces fantomatiques.” Again, this is only supposed to indicate that there is something problematic about social causation or social powers.
- 55.
- 56.
- 57.
Nota bene, philosophers of historiography, many historians and sociologists constantly talk about such an overarching history or they never make explicit what they believe they are talking about while writing about history in a realist or ontic sense.
- 58.
This also holds for formerly notorious questions about the role of “laws” in historico-social science. Whereas for Bunge “mechanisms without conceivable laws are called ‘miracles’” (2006, p. 135), Little’s ML claims to be something like a counterprogram to the usefulness of social “laws,” whereas critical realists seem to accept restricted (“historical”) tendencies as such “laws.” For problems critical realist have with the notion of a law, see Outhwaite (1987b). Recently, there has emerged a powerful tendency towards an affirmative consensus in twenty-first century philosophy of historiography concerning the claim that the people that are called historians constantly invoke “laws”; see, for example, Klinger (1997), Di Nuoscio (2004), Antiseri (2005), Frings (2007), Berry (2008), Leuridan and Froeyman (2012).
- 59.
Bhaskar, of course, saw himself the problems that can occur in realist social ontologies (1982, 283): “Talk of ‘emergence’ can easily become vague and general, if not indeed laced with frankly idealist or romantic overtones.”
- 60.
- 61.
Since we cannot discuss all the differences in these frameworks and I do not claim to be a metaphysician anyhow, let us list which notions are at stake in this debate: thing, property, types of properties, social property, change and transformation, event (historical), process, history, mechanism, structure, system, society, organization, institution, fact, social fact, causation and determination, energy and causal power, laws, agency, agents and action, levels, micro-x vs. macro-x, emergence, etc.
- 62.
Because this variety of ontology of history would take its stock of questions from debates among historians and social scientists, on the one hand, and the implications or presuppositions of their research, on the other hand, I call it loosely “science-oriented”.
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Acknowledgments
This study has been made possible by a grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and was realized in the project Explanation, Laws and Causality in Historical Science, a subunit of the research group Causation, Laws, Dispositions and Explanation at the Intersection of Science and Metaphysics. I thank Oliver R. Scholz for saving me from the biggest nonsense in history. The flowers go, as always, to Eileen.
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Plenge, D. (2014). Do Historians Study the Mechanisms of History? A Sketch. In: Kaiser, M.I., Scholz, O.R., Plenge, D., Hüttemann, A. (eds) Explanation in the Special Sciences. Synthese Library, vol 367. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7563-3_10
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