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History and evolution of science
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The Quarrel About Historical Explanation
The discussion of the philosophical question of historical explanation is in reality a disagreement concerning the nature of the philosophic method.
There are primarily two sides taken in this argument, those who agree with Carl Hempel and those that do not.
According to Hempel a historical event is only sufficiently explained when it logically fits a set of confirmed pre-existing conditions along with some universal laws.
Certainly all things cannot easily be assigned to rules and laws.
Political coups, assassinations and revolutions are too complex for such a rigid explanation. And who is to say what perquisites there are for situations.
Certainly there is no one who can predict every instance of a given event, there are just too many variables.
Hempel then notes that Historians are seldom able to stick to his procedure and at best can only make an explanation sketch. Hempel seems to be saying then, that the majority of explanations surrounding historical events are inadequate and incomplete.
There are three main divisions of anti-Hempelians. There are those that agree with Hempel to the point that there are rules and general laws that can be followed, but a historian's explanation is adequate if all he can provide is a sketch. The second group states that the general laws are not necessary and as long as the explanation provides an understandable narrative, it is complete.
The final group believes that only one condition is necessary, and if more information is needed, one only needs to elaborate on that one condition.
The Hempelians and the anti-Hempelians both have common ground. They are both engaged in the philosophy of history, but this is where the agreement stops for even the groups starting points are different.
Hempelians give their explanations to answer the question of why something happened. Their objective is to replace curiosity with understanding.
For this to happen both the laws and general rules given must logically agree.
In other words you must be able to deduce the answer after given the laws and rules. It would not be enough for a Hempelian to hear that conditions led up to an event. He must know himself that these conditions are causes, and he'll know this only if the conditions are widely known or confirmed causes of said event.
These conditions must not only be confirmed but true or the explanation would merely be an exercise in futility.
An anti-Hempelian's problem with all of this is summarized in that historians do not use such methods to do their explaining, even if they did an explanation may not result, and finally historians are doing a very fine job
the laws it chooses, 2. the rule of law, which says that laws must be
To study history, the facts and information must be passed down. To do so, historians record the information in textbooks and other nonfiction works. Whether or not the historians retell facts or construct their own version of history is debatable. History can be percieved as being “constructed” by the historians due to their bias, elimination of controversy, strive for entertainment, and neglect to update the information.
David Hume, in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, discusses how we cannot predict the future. Even though our experiences and our reasoning tell us that objects act in a predictable way, we still cannot prove how objects will act in the future based upon previous interactions. After biting into a piece of pizza we expect an enjoyable taste. This enjoyable taste is expected because our past experiences have proven this to us. Even though we think we can predict that the pizza will act the same as our previous experiences, it may just blow up upon biting. Hume explains that there is no way to predict the future based on our previous experiences and reasoning and I will explain the logic he uses to prove this.
...xpect nor want historians to agree in their interpretations of the past, for then new discoveries would never be made and our knowledge would be limited. It is through this synthesis of knowledge and constant dialogue between historians that the most comprehensive representation of the Progressive Era, and ultimately history in general, is created.
Law is a system of rules that are implemented throughout social establishments to govern behavior. A principle for judging acts as reasonable or unreasonable and they may seem objective, universal, and knowable, which dispositions are guide. Our function is rational activity, and our rational nature gives us dispositions when we are naturally disposed to seek to know, understand, and be
I believe that Karl Marx and Frederick Engel and W.E.B Du Bois are both right. They both had one specific goal in mind; social equality. Karl Marx and Frederick Engel wanted to close the gap between the ruling class and the working class. The working class were being overworked and underpaid while working in factories. Marx and Engels wanted equality in the society by advocating for a communist society, where all people have equal access to resources. W.E.B Du Bois wanted African Americans to have the same equal rights as the white men. African Americans were neglected in the American society and were not allowed the same rights as the white men.
3 . Laws and any derivative statements must comply with the prescribed natural laws .
Over the years, different jurisdictions had built their specific system of rules of conduct to govern behaviour. These legal systems, influenced by historical and cultural roots, can be distinguished in two families, the Civil law and the Common law legal systems. The distinctions lies in the process in which each decision is make by the judge and on the legal sources that shapes the law. Indeed, by contrast to the Common law system, which is largely based on Precedents, meaning the decisions that have already been made by judges in similar cases, the Civil law system is based on legislator’s decisions and legal codes with which judges have to justify their judgment . Consequently, instead of referencing to concepts and rules
rules of the state and the rules of man. It is unfortunate that these two forces must be in
In a world that filled with disputes and disagreements, it is somehow difficult to describe a conflicting event in a neutral tone based on one’s own judgment, typically for those historians who attempted to examine the events occurred in the past. As a matter of fact, people’s perspectives may be influenced by many conditions such as their cultural identities, genders, religions, emotions etc. Therefore, it is more likely that historians tend to hold biased view that may affect their tone in neutrality. However, to what extent can historians, or more generally the people, learn the history from an unbiased and neutral perspective? In general, as long as people equally analyze the view points from both sides and take the position between the two, they can then describe the history neutrally. To help substantiate that historical fact can actually be described in neutral tone, two effective examples below, which are the Korean War and the Vietnam War, could provide sufficient justification.
any rule which had a concept as its basis. From this it follows that "fine
1.The strict supremacy of statute over judicial decisions and a tradition of literalism in statutory interpretation, 2. Where no legislation exists, the courts are bound by the doctrine of precedent in accordance with a strict hierarchy of judicial authority, 3. In the absence of a relevant precedent, the judges will be guided by legal principle and reasoning by analogy, and 4. There is clear way of distinguishing the ratio of a case…
The authors of After the Fact The Art of Historical Detection, make the assertion that history is not an account of what happened in the past because what happened in the past is only the raw material: "History is not some inert body of knowledge `out there' in the past, but a continual act of construction whose end product is being reshaped and made anew every time someone ventures into the archives" (Davidson and Lytle IX). Davidson and Lytle mean that the interpretation of history changes based on the methods of investigation used by the historian. Interpretations also change based on how long "after the fact" we choose to go back and investigate. Current beliefs, social trends, and a person's racial background can't help but play an influential role in how we perceive a past event.
The most effective laws are those laws that are able to coincide with what people do.
In society is it generally been accepted that rules are needed to be able to function properly in our everyday lives. Laws are created to create civilized societies, without which society would begin to crumble. There are many views on how a good society should be and many theories put in place. Rachels’ provides us two separate theories that demonstrate two different ways we place rules on the society.