has history any meeaning crtique of popper's philsophy

Wesleyan University

Has History any Meaning? A Critique of Popper's Philosophy of History by Burleigh TaylorWilkinsReview by: Carol WallaceHistory and Theory, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Oct., 1979), pp. 417-427Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2504538 .

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REVIEW ESSAYS 417

tional modes of thought and practice while sliding over the structural imperatives of the contemporary order; Marxists of positivist and structuralist inclinations construct theories in which the idea of the subject is treated as a myth and people are treated as the mere bearers of socially produced roles. If the portraits of these theories are exaggerated, the exaggerations are illuminating. They point to analogues at the level of theory to pressures in contemporary politics to close the space for a politics of enlightenment.

The ideal speech situation, serving as the centerpiece of Habermas' theory, is more than an abstract theoretical construct. It symbolizes at once the ideal of enlightened politics and the threatened closure of public space for its realization. Unconstrained by any concrete political practice it provides a sanctuary of sorts for political reflection. In this space thought could run idle, even if politics ran out of control. We have here the idealized speech of stoics frozen out of effective participation in public life. The wish to expand the space for democratic politics and the anxiety that democratic political discourse may become increasingly detached from the concrete imperatives of our political economy are condensed into the sym- bol of ideal speech.

WILLIAM E. CONNOLLY

University of Massachusetts Amherst

HAS HISTORY ANY MEANING? A Critique of Popper's Philosophy of His- tory. By Burleigh Taylor Wilkins. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978. Pp. 251.

Followers of Popper will be dismayed to find that in Has History Any Meaning? Burleigh Taylor Wilkins takes exception to nearly every claim that Popper makes about the nature of historical inquiry and points out fundamental inconsistencies between Popper's philosophy of history and his general epistemology. But as Wilkins explains in his introduction, these disagreements must be seen in the light of more basic common assumptions: "that there is a unity of method in the natural and social sciences, that scientific and empirical statements are falsifiable, and that there is a dualism between facts and moral standards" (14). Wilkins exemplifies Col- lingwood's critic, "a reader who agrees with his author's views up to a certain point, and on that limited agreement builds his case for refusing a completer agreement,"1 by showing that acceptance of three of Popper's

1. R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Philosophical Method (Oxford, 1933), 219.



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main theses entails the impossibility of accepting his theory of history in its entirety.

Antagonists of Popper, on the other hand, will be surprised by Wilkins' claim that apart from the question of political influence, "Popper is as important to contemporary philosophy of history as Hegel was to that of the nineteenth century and for much the same reason: just as nineteenth- century philosophy of history was mainly an extended commentary on Hegel, so contemporary philosophy of history is largely an extended commentary on arguments presented by Popper" (13). I am not convinced, however, that this bold claim, rather misleadingly quoted on the jacket cover, is either adequately supported by or necessary to the main argument of the book. Popper may indeed emerge as the Hegel of the twentieth century, but we must wait to see whether this hypothesis will be falsified by the emergence of new trends in philosophy.

The most significant contribution of Wilkins' book does not lie in his, to my mind, rather exaggerated predictions about the enduring importance of Popper's work in the philosophy of history. Wilkins' approach is not in- tended to be that of the historian of ideas, who would trace Popper's intellectual development and his influence on his contemporaries. What he has accomplished, however, is to provide us with the most careful, critical, and comprehensive treatment to date of a relatively neglected aspect of Popper's philosophy. Although, as I shall argue, Wilkins' continuation and development of Popper's philosophy of history fails to resolve the difficul- ties he finds in the original theory, his attempt is worthy of serious study, because it raises and focuses a number of central problems for the contemporary philosopher of history.

The common interpretation of Karl Popper is that he is a philosopher of science of the first rank, whose falsificationist model of scientific inquiry attempts to solve the problem of induction and has been extremely influen- tial, not only within academic philosophy, but in all the scientific disciplines. Popper's political philosophy is viewed by many as equally impress- ive, providing a classic defense of liberal democracy and a social policy of piecemeal engineering as opposed to utopian planning. Wilkins does not question Popper's achievements as a political philosopher and philosopher of science, but attempts to show that he is of equal importance as a philosopher of history.

Wilkins' task is complicated by the fact that Popper has written no major work in the philosophy of history comparable to The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London, 1959) and The Open Society and Its Enemies (Lon- don, 1966). The main theses of Popper's theory of history are presented in the brief concluding chapter of The Open Society, which bears the same title as Wilkins' book. The argument here is, as Wilkins recognizes, cryptic



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and puzzling. Popper argues that history has no meaning, because "history" in the sense in which most people speak of it does not exist. Al- though no meanings or purposes can be discovered in the historical process, according to Popper, human beings can impose their own purposes upon it. History itself is meaningless, but we can give it a meaning through our decisions.

These claims about the meaning of history, Wilkins argues, cannot be properly understood apart from Popper's other works, particularly The Poverty of Historicism (London, 1961). Drawing upon Popper's criticisms of historicism, his theory of historical explanation and interpretation, his discussion of wholes and trends,- and his moral philosophy, Wilkins arrives at an interpretation of Popper's philosophy of history which is essentially Kantian in its emphasis upon the dualism of facts and moral standards.

Wilkins detects a tension in Popper's thought between his commitment to the unity of method in the natural and social sciences and what might be called his "critique of historical reason." He concludes that while Popper's attack on historicism is a valuable reminder of the dangers of uncritical attempts to make predictions about the future course of history, he has overestimated the limitations of historical knowledge. Wilkins writes, "I cannot believe that historicism in some form or other will not persist or recur-the desire or need to predict the future course of various societies or even of the entire historical process is too deeply imbedded in many of us to be eradicated by a thousand Poverties" (161). This statement is reminiscent of Kant's declaration, "That the human mind will ever give up metaphysical researches is as little to be expected as that we, to avoid inhaling impure air, should prefer to give up breathing altogether.'2 There are clear parallels between Popper's polemic against the positivists on the one hand and the historicists on the other and Kant's attempt to steer between empiricism and rationalism, although in Popper sometimes the empiricist seems to outrun the Kantian. Just as Kant laid the groundwork for a more self-consciously critical metaphysics, Wilkins believes that Pop- per's arguments may help to "shape some more responsible versions of historicism than we have had thus far" (161).

The organization of the book follows that of the concluding chapter of The Open Society and Its Enemies. One might expect that before present- ing an argument against the view that history has meaning, Popper would first of all clarify the sense in which he is using the term "meaning"; but he writes: "I do not wish to enter here into the problem of the meaning of 'meaning.' I take it for granted that most people know with sufficient clar- ity what they mean when they speak of the 'meaning of history' or of the 'meaning of life'."' Wilkins points out, however, that the term "meaning"

2. Immanuel Kant, Prolegoinena to Any Future Metaphysics (Indianapolis, 1950), 116. 3. Open Society and Its Enemies, II, 269.



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is not univocal, borrowing from W. H. Walsh a useful distinction between "meaning in history" and "meaning of history." A meaning in history is an explanation which renders some historical event intelligible, the proper object of the historian's quest. There may be many meanings in history, but the meaning of history is, on the other hand, necessarily singular. To search for the meaning of history is to seek either a system of regular laws or patterns governing the entire historical process or a goal which unifies it and gives it moral significance.

In denying that history has meaning Popper clearly is intending to argue against the possibility of discovering the meaning of history, not to deny the validity of the historian's attempts to find meaning in history. Accord- ing to Popper, historicists make the mistake of supposing that we can discover the meaning of history, both in the sense of the laws governing the historical process as a whole, which enable us to make predictions about it, and in the sense of the end or goal of history. Furthermore, historicism maintains that because history is moving in a certain direction, the end toward which it tends is therefore morally desirable, thus illegitimately drawing moral imperatives from allegedly factual premises.

In the Poverty of Historicism Popper mounts his attack against this view by arguing that there are certain intrinsic limits to historical knowledge which prevent the possibility of discovering history's meaning in Walsh's second sense. First of all, what distinguishes history from the generalizing sciences is a concern with actual, singular, or specific events rather than general laws. Secondly, although these singular events can be explained by deducing them from universal covering laws, Popper argues that there are no distinctively historical laws. The covering laws that historians use are derived from other sciences, and these laws are usually trivial. Take, for example, the following explanation of the division of Poland in 1772 in the face of the combined power of Russia, Prussia, and Austria which tacitly appeals to the uninteresting law, "If of two armies which are about equally well armed and led, one has a tremendous superiority in men, then the other never wins." Thirdly, often historians' theoretical concepts are not consciously employed, as in the sciences, but are implicit in their terminol- ogy. Finally, historical knowledge is limited by the fact that history is necessarily selective, depending upon a preconceived point of view through which the evidence is viewed and organized, and which is generally unfalsifiable. Taken together, these theses about the limitations of historical inquiry downgrade the importance of general considerations in history as contrasted with science.

Wilkins challenges each of these arguments as imposing unnecessary restrictions upon historians' methods. Against Popper's claims that history is concerned with specific events, he argues that such a sweeping, simplistic characterization of what historians do indicates an insensitivity to the vari-



REVIEW ESSAYS 421

ety'of interests among historians. Although some historians may choose to focus upon particular events, others attempt to write universal histories about whole nations or periods. Furthermore, even if many historians employ trivial laws, concepts which are only unconsciously theoretical, and untestable hypotheses, Popper has not shown that all histories must necessarily be limited in these respects. Finally, although Popper is right to emphasize the historian's need to be selective, and hence his reliance upon preconceived interpretations, it has not been demonstrated that interpretation is any more central to history than to science.

This last argument seems to me to be the most damaging to Popper's philosophy of history. Even if he were able to answer Wilkins' first two criticisms by showing that historians should not be concerned with "wholes" in any sense of the word and that triviality is a necessary and not just an accidental or occasional feature of the covering laws historians employ, Popper would have difficulty answering the charge that his philosophy of history is inconsistent with his philosophy of science. Any kind of systematic inquiry depends upon interpretations for the selection and organization of data. It is a commonplace now in the natural and social sciences and the humanities as well that there is no such thing as a "pure given," no facts which can be apprehended independently of conceptual frameworks. Popper deserves much of the credit for replacing a naive empiricism in the philosophy of science with a more Kantian model of scientific inquiry.

Of course, Popper is decidedly unKantian in his insistence that our conceptual frameworks are not permanent and universal categories of the human mind. At the same time he vigorously opposes what he terms the "Myth of the Framework," the relativistic alternative to Kant's epistemology, according to which we are all necessarily trapped in a particular framework, each one of which is incommensurable with all others. He argues that "at any moment we are prisoners caught in the framework of our theories; our expectations; our past experiences; our language. But we are prisoners in a Pickwickian sense; if we try, we can break out of our framework at any time. Admittedly, we shall find ourselves again in a framework, but it will be a better and roomier one; and we can at any moment break out of it again." And yet in his philosophy of history Popper seems to revert to the same kind of relativism which he opposes in his philosophy of science. His arguments suggest that historians are prisoners of their interpretations in a literal rather than a Pickwickian sense. If historians' frameworks are incommensurable and impenetrable in a way that scientists' frameworks are not, Popper would seem to be fortifying in his philosophy of history the myth which he attacks in his philosophy of science as the "central bulwark of irrationalism."4

4. "Normal Science and Its Dangers" in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge, 1970), 56.



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Wilkins not only exposes this paradox in Popper's thought but offers a possible solution to it which he thinks is close to the spirit of Popper's own approach in its emphasis on the unity of method in the natural social sciences. Popper's case for the difference between history and science rests on his argument that in history there are no theories or universal laws capable of unifying and bringing order to the subject matter; therefore, the unified points of view which operate as principles of selection in the writing of history must be provided by preconceived, untestable interpretations, such as the idea that what is important in history is the great man, or national character, or economic conditions. Contrary to Popper, Wilkins believes that the similarities between scientific theories and historical interpretation are much more significant than the differences.

First of all, both history and science aim at providing causal explanations. While accepting Popper's covering-law model of historical explanation, Wilkins denies that covering laws are necessarily either trivial or untestable. He cites examples of significant laws from economics which Popper himself uses, such as, "You cannot have full employment without inflation" or "You cannot introduce agricultural tariffs and at the same time reduce the cost of living.' Once we admit the possibility of nontrivial covering laws in history, Wilkins argues, there is no more reason to deny that historical theories might be falsifiable than there is to deny this of scientific hypotheses.

The fact that historians' selective principles are "preconceived" points, not to a differentiating characteristic, but to a feature which history shares with science, in terms of Popper's anti-inductivist philosophy of science. Popper cannot consistently maintain that the use of preconceived theoretical frameworks is a virtue in science and a defect in history. Nor is the fact that historical evidence is recorded and selected in accordance with a preconceived viewpoint sufficient to show that historical interpretations are unfalsifiable. In history, just as in science, observations made in the light of one theory might be used to test some other theory. For instance, a letter written home by a soldier concerned to show that he handled himself well his first time under fire might provide evidence for testing a theory about factors affecting morale or the hypothesis "that a certain retreat was an orderly withdrawal and not a rout" (66). According to Wilkins, the historian's critical scrutiny of the evidence is in many ways analogous to a crucial experiment in physics.

While Popper maintains that not all historical interpretations are of equal merit, Wilkins contends that he has failed to provide a criterion for decid- ing among a plurality of competing untestable interpretations. Popper's encouragement of bold, improbable hypotheses in science avoids the pit-

5. Poverty of Historicismz, 62.



REVIEW ESSAYS 423

falls of irrationalism only because, while there are no restrictions on the scientist's'freedom imaginatively to construct hypotheses, there are severe tests to which these hypotheses must be subjected and definite criteria by which we can judge rationally among them. Without the possibility of testing historical theories, there is no way to distinguish "the heroic inves- tigator who risks much from the charlatan who claims much, believing that the risk of being found out is quite small" (94).

Popper recommends that we abandon the ideal of objective history as an unrealizable goal and admit that we can never know the events of the past as they actually did happen. But such a concession to skepticism and relativism is bound to undermine Popper's efforts to refute historicism. If each generation has the right to interpret history in its own way depending upon its practical needs and moral concerns, there is no way in which the historicist vision can be excluded from the realm of legitimate interpretations. An historicist could even appeal to Popper's arguments for the untes- tability of historical interpretations and the right of each generation to reinterpret history in accordance with conventional values in support of his position. Popper's dilemma is similar to that of the radical existentialist, concerned to oppose scientism and totalitarianism, who asserts that man's freedom to create his own values is limitless, and is then left powerless to argue rationally against an Ayer or a Hitler. Popper wants to claim that in history (though not in science) conventionalism does not imply arbitrari- ness, but he has not given a cogent argument showing why.

In short, if Wilkins is right, there is a serious gap between what Popper intends to do and what he accomplishes in his philosophy of history. He intends to block the historicist's attempt to determine the meaning of history, but to allow as legitimate the historian's quest for meaning in history, in other words, in the explanation of particular historical events. What he has unwittingly done, however, is precisely the opposite. By arguing that we impose our own meanings on the historical process, Popper has, in effect, given license to the historicist, no less than anyone else, to read his own meaning into history. By denying that the historian can ever know the past as it really happened, Popper has eliminated the possibility of discovering objective meanings in history along with the possibility of discovering the objective meaning of history as a whole.

Wilkins' attempt to reinterpret Popper's philosophy of history in order to bring it more in line with his insight into the methodology of science is certainly an improvement, both in internal consistency and pertinence to the actual practice of historians. I suspect, however, that a kind of tension, perhaps an inconsistency, remains even in Wilkins' reconstructed version of Popper's view of history.

The foundation of agreement upon which Wilkins constructs his critique of Popper includes the following two theses: that there is a unity of method



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in history and natural science and that there is a basic dualism between facts arid moral standards. By a "dualism" in this context, Wilkins seems to mean no more than a logical distinction. To say that moral standards are logically distinct from facts means simply that no statement of fact can constitute sufficient logical grounds from which we can deduce moral con- clusions. The historicist's claim to discover moral significance in the historical process represents, in Kantian terms, a "heteronomous" attempt to bridge the logical gap between statements of fact and moral imperatives. Wilkins agrees with Popper to the extent that our moral autonomy is pre- served only by the recognition that "facts as such have no meaning; they gain it only through our decisions." 6 Since no facts are sufficient to determine our choices, the only moral meaning history can have is the meaning we decide to give it.

The difficulty I encounter with this argument is that it seems inconsistent with the thesis about the unity of method. If we are committed to the view that history and science are methodologically identical, then we cannot erect a theory of what is distinctive about history upon the difference between facts and decisions; the two disciplines must be distinguished according to subject matter, not according to method.

There are two possible ways of attempting to avoid the inconsistency. On the one hand, one could adhere to the unity of method between history and science and argue that decision and creativity play as central a role in science as they do in history. This position could be supported by arguing that in science as well as in history uninterpreted facts are strictly meaningless, since all observation is necessarily theory-laden. No theory can be confirmed by appeal to neutral facts, and therefore we can decide among competing theories only in terms of such standards as simplicity, coher- ence, completeness, or fruitfulness. Just as theories provide principles of selection which unify our observations, our decisions to adopt certain standards for evaluation perform the same unifying function with respect to scientific theories. No set of statements of scientific facts can entail standards of evaluation; thus in science, as well as in history, there is a dualism between facts and decisions. "Facts as such have no meaning; they gain it only through our decisions."7 Both Popper and Wilkins, however, resist such a concession to conventionalism in natural science.

On the other hand, one could argue that the standards by which scientific theories are evaluated have a different status from the standards that historians employ. Scientific standards are objective, grounded in the truth about nature, while the historian's standards are subjective interpretations, depending on the particular needs and interests of his own time, in which

6. Open Society and Its Enemzies, II, 278-279. 7. Idem.



REVIEW ESSAYS 425

case decision would play a far more important role in history than in science. Then it would appear that we must abandon the hypothesis that a single method is applicable in the two disciplines, but Popper and Wilkins are unwilling to do so.

It seems to me that the tension in Wilkins' book arises from his attempt to view history in two fundamentally different ways at once - as a creative act of interpretation and as the discovery of objective laws. His acceptance of Popper's view that history and science share a single method leads to his emphasis on the covering-law model as even more important than Popper himself thought it to be. At the same time his commitment to Popper's dualism of facts and standards results in subjectivism with regard to the meanings we impose upon history. Thus for Wilkins we can discover objective historical laws, but we can only create historical meaning in the moral sense. Meaning in history is there to be found; the meaning of history must be brought to it by our decisions.

This answer to the question, "Has history any meaning?" may seem plausible initially, but Wilkins cannot have it both ways. If the meaning of history is a subjective point of view which operates as the historian's principle of selection and organization, it follows that the meanings it? history which the selective principle includes must also be subjective and arbitrary. For example, suppose that an historian decides to adopt the ideal of the open society as the meaning of history. This point of view deter- mines his selection of evidence and also the universal generalizations, such as "Power tends to corrupt," which he uses to explain historical events. Since his vision of the meaning of history is a creative interpretation and not a discovery about the historical process, there is nothing to guarantee the objective status of the so-called "laws" to which he appeals in his particular explanations.

On the other hand, if historians can discover objective meanings it? history by explaining events in terms of covering laws analogous to scientific laws, the meaning of history by which the covering laws are organized must also be objective. If "Power tends to corrupt" is a genuine covering law which can be used to explain events scientifically, a discovery about the historical process and not merely a subjective decision, the historian's knowledge of this law will limit his freedom to impose his own creative meaning of history on the process. He will, of course, have the freedom to approve or disapprove of this universal tendency in human affairs (which presumably will depend in part on whether he expects to be among the powerful or among those destined to suffer the effects of their corruption). But this limited autonomy with respect to historical laws is no more rele- vant to the methods of history than is the scientist's freedom to approve or disapprove of the law of gravitation.

I have tried to show that Wilkins' attempt to avoid both absolutistic



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historicism and historical relativism fails because two of the assumptions which he borrows from Popper - the unity of method in history and science and dualism of facts and standards - are incompatible. Although Wilkins' approach to history is fundamentally wrongheaded, his book does contain a clue toward a solution to the problems it raises.

Ironically, one of the most interesting and fruitful sections of Wilkins' book is his discussion of Popper's notion of the logic of the situation, in which he seems to forget his a priori assumption about the unity of scientific method. The upshot of his analysis of Popper's situational logic is that historians not only explain events by deducing them from general laws; they also assess or evaluate the rational adequacy of the acts of historical agents, given what they know about the agent's situation and his beliefs about his situation. For example, if we are studying an edict of an emperor, we must analyze the emperor's situation and rationally reconstruct the reasoning which led him to the action he took. Then we are in a position to understand the significance of the edict and to assess the adequacy of the emperor's response to his circumstances.

This indicates, although Wilkins apparently does not recognize it, that Popper does see an important difference in the methodology of the historian from that of the natural scientist, especially since Popper regards his situational logic as a more important philosophical discovery than the covering-law model of explanation. The subject matter of history is sig- nificantly different from the subject matter of science, since it includes intentional actions as well as natural processes. Thus the distinguishing characteristic of history cannot be the discovery of objective universal laws from which particular events necessarily follow. Although Wilkins is surely right to insist that historians may borrow non-trivial laws from other disciplines such as economics, this is not their primary task. Nor can history be viewed as essentially the creation of subjective interpretations which are arbitrarily imposed upon an inherently meaningless process. The intentional actions which historians study have meaning from the point of view of the agents who produced them, and these meanings can be creatively reconstructed, as well as rationally evaluated, by the historian.

If the distinctive feature of historical understanding is the rational as- sessment of past actions by situational analysis, then Wilkins' neat dichot- omy between facts and standards of evaluation - parallel to the distinc- tions between meaning in history and meaning of' history and between the discovery of objective meaning, as opposed to the creation of subjective meaning - would seem to break down. First of all, as far as subject matter is concerned, the dualism between facts and standards is not as sharp in history as it is in science. The standards of evaluation which the historical agent uses are among the facts which the historian attempts to discover and to assess. Secondly, as far as method is concerned, the dualism between



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facts and 'standards does not parallel the distinction between meaning in history and meaning of history. Evaluation by the historian of past actions in accordance with the logic of the situation is involved at the level of meaning in history as well as at the level of meaning of history.

Although the historian exercises creative imagination in his explanation of particular historical events, and not only in his formation of grandiose interpretations of the historical process as a whole, this does not necessarily rule out the possibility of objective historical knowledge. In history, unlike science, the creation and discovery of meaning are inseparable. Verum factum, as Vico put it; we can only know truths that have been made by man. The historian can discover meaning in the historical process only because it has been created by our ancestors. He can creatively reconstruct the meanings of historical events only because they are already implicitly there.

Wilkins assesses Poppers situational logic as "an ambitious attempt to preserve Collingwood's theory of sympathetic understanding while avoid- ing his subjectivism" (14). He expects that "should the current con- troversy concerning the covering-law model ever subside, Popper's situational logic may well become the next most discussed topic in the philosophy of history" (14). As one who has been bored nearly to death by discussions of covering laws, I hope that he is right.

CAROL WALLACE

Rider College

THEORETICAL METHODS IN SOCIAL HISTORY. By Arthur L. Stinchcombe. New York: Academic Press, 1978. Pp. x, 130.

Arthur Stinchcombe can lay claim to being one of the leading American sociological theorists. Theoretical Methods in Social History consequently demands careful attention. And although Stinchcombe is a notoriously and frustratingly difficult writer, the book merits study for it reflects the quality of the impact the traditional disciplines of philosophy and history have had on sociological science.

Stinchcombe navigates between what he sees as two erroneous views of the connection between sociology and history. The first view is descended from Kant and the Vienna Circle's empiricism. It argues that the task of social theory is the construction of general laws and abstract concepts. From these laws and concepts the theorist derives propositions of lesser generality and tests them against historical data. While this position has a philosophical lineage, Stinchcombe identifies it with that of contemporary sociologists and with a positivist view of science. He contrasts such a view



has history any meeaning crtique of popper's philsophy

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