One of the crucial problems in contemporary philosophy of history is to determine which is more relevant-historical explanation or historical understanding. Writers on this question may be divided into three types- (1) Idealists, (2) Covering-law theorists, and (3) Reactionists, as M. Mandelbaum has summed them up. I think the only possible approach, in current theoretical arguments, is the third one, which accepts, besides explanation by covering-law, some sort of understanding, especially when it is concerned with a more complicated account of human actions. It does not neccessarilly follow, however, that understanding is a peculiar way of historical inquiry rather than a kind of provisionary account which has still to be 'filled out' by some more rigorous explanation. Historians surely try not just to describe the given events, but to explain them. Thus, 'understanding' might be said to lie in the middle of 'description' and 'explanation'; historians would first describe the events as they were given, and then by attempting to answer the 'why' of these events they would proceed to 'understand' them, and finally when this 'why' could be answered objectively such an 'understanding' might be replaced by an 'explanation.' This, is basically the same in all areas of scientific inquiry of which history may be a rather incomplete one. Thus, the other several kinds of historical explanations, which are supposed to be peculiar to history according to W. Dray and others, would be after all reduced to the Hempelian model of explanation. It is true that historians may seldom succeed in giving explanations as satisfactory as those of physicists, but this does not preclude historians from filling out their explanations. I suppose that the very process of this 'filling out' constitutes progress in the field of historical studies. Scientific explanation is merely a logical instrument of our historical thinking, and need not be extended to a problem of, say, historical perspective, which is surely open to the philosophy of history.
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