Book Description

Excerpt from The American Historical Review, Vol. 9: October, 1903 Netherlands, because it embraces them all. Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that while the whole is more complex and richer in content than any of its parts, the part retains its individuality and does not simply appear as the illustration of a law. If Buckle could discover no logical synthesis in the works of such a man as Ranke, it was because he Was blind to every form of synthesis but that of natural science. When Munsterberg asserts that Every science considers the single facts in their. Relations to other facts, works toward connections, he is simply stating what has always been the practice of historians but when he adds towards generalities, he is stating what is not the practice and what could not be the practice if history is to remain history. His failure to note that the relation of the fact to other facts is not necessarily-that of an example under a law, of a less abstract thing to a more abstract, but may be that of a complex part to a complex whole, leads him to the illogical conclusion that the method of natural science does not differ from that of historical science. Not only does historical science select the facts important for the whole, instead of those common to all not only does it treat these units as parts of a complex whole instead of examples under a law but it traces the causal connection between the facts. How can it trace causal connection without discovering laws and thus applying the method of the natural science? The confusion here is due to another misunderstanding as fundamental as those touch ing the selecting and grouping of the facts. Causality as a principle. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.