Science and History: A Critique of Positivist Epistemology

by Heinrich Rickert

Can "historical laws," having the universal validity characteristic of the empirical regularities discovered by the natural sciences, be derived inductively from the study of the data provided by historical experience? Is there, in fact, a specifically "historical" method distinct from the experimental procedures of the natural sciences? In what sense can history be considered as a science at all, rather than as an art or as a branch of psychology?In order to throw light on these questions, the author, one of the most eminent representatives of the "Southwest German school" of [neo-Kantian] philosophy, undertakes here to classify the empirical sciences according to both their methodology and their subject matter. In each of these respects he finds that history and the natural sciences stand at opposite poles from each other. History, which forms its concepts by an individualizing procedure, is concerned with the unique, the particular, the non-repeatable, but only in so far as it is relevant to the ends aimed at by men. The natural sciences, on the contrary, forming their concepts by a process of generalization, are concerned with regularly recurring phenomena, but view them as indifferent to values and exclusively from the standpoint of universal laws having unconditionally general validity. Between these two extremes is an intermediate field, consisting, on the one hand, of individualizing sciences whose subject matter is "nature," or reality considered without reference to values; and, on the other hand, of generalizing sciences whose subject matter falls within the cultural domain by virtue of its relevance to historically acknowledged values. With brilliant lucidity, Rickert then proceeds to clarify the confusions underlying the identification of history either with art or with psychology and demonstrates that, far from duplicating reality, history reconstitutes and simplifies it by means of concepts. (from the dust jacket)

161 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1902