تبيين و فهم در تاريخ

Explanation and Understanding in History.

Philosophy of history in regard with the two different senses intended from the term "history", namely a series of past events - researched by the historian - and the research of historian itself, respectively are divided into speculative and critical philosophy or analytical philosophy of history. The critical philosophy of history aims at clarifying the research nature of history and surveying the basic presuppositions, systematizing implications as well as its research methodology. More of philosophical writings on history, in fact, attempt to respond to this question whether it can be uneqivocally said that history is other than empirical science or not? In response to this question and in dealing with that type of explanation or understanding the historians are after, the idealists mostly believe that the idea of such explanation that is generally appropriate in scientific studies is different and in contrast the positivists usually deny the difference. In this essay, William Dary first deals with an overall layout of positivistic position and then assesses the considerations vis-a-vis position. By calling this assumption challenge that every elucidation is presented in response to question of "Why"? and bringing forth other types of explanation, as limited-law explanation, explanation monitoring the contingency of happening and reality of incidence as well as collgatory explanation, all called by the historians as explanation, he asserts that these explanations,despite lacking the conditions of ideatistic and positivistic explanations, are themselves complete explanations. That some history philosophers complain of such explanations being weak methodologically is in fact because they ignore the question raised not objecting to the way the historians proceeded typically to answer it.