Abstract
Historiography and systematic history deal with the same problem: why have the events of history occurred? In the first part of the article the answer given by the deductive-nomological model is discussed. The Hempel-Oppenheim model is characterized as a krypto-reduction of historical sciences to natural ones, since the covering law has to be taken from the natural sciences. The trend to replacement of the deductive-nomological explanation by statistical forms finally leads to Gardiner’s, Greeno’s, Danto’s and Dray’s weakened forms using no general law-like statements in historical sciences at all. Thus the hiatus between natural sciences and humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) opens up again. In the second part, the approach of Hegel, Rickert and Dilthey and the modern hermeneutic approach to history of Gehlen, Gadamer and Schelsky is reduced to its bare essentials: history and historical science conceived of as an evaluation of man’s past. Consequently, the third part offers a scheme of interpretation (evaluation) as a two-dimensional manifold of evaluation and calendar time under uncertainty and risk. The axiomatic definition of this form of historical time plus an empirical interpretation serves as an explicatum for history. The concept of a common history of a group is defined; re-evaluation and re-interpretation are regarded as a repetition of the comparison of evaluated events of the past, leading to different rankings, even if the underlying quasi-order (political, ideological or cultural) remains the same. That means that the individual’s or nation’s momentary experience or estimations are decisive for the evaluation of its history. Evaluation of the past may even depend on the future (prospects). A definition of traditionalism and activism is given. This result does not need psychological, ideological motives for re-interpretation of history. It is based solely on uncertainty facing the future or past, uses no absolute values and needs no teleological interpretation of the course of history.
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Leinfellner, W. (1973). Historical Time and a New Conception of the Historical Sciences. In: Bunge, M. (eds) The Methodological Unity of Science. Theory and Decision Library, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2667-3_10
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