The Philosophical Structure Of Historical Explanation

In The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation, Paul A. Roth resolves disputes persisting since the nineteenth century about the scientific status of history. He does this by showing why historical explanations must take the form of a narrative, making their logic explicit, and revealing how the rational evaluation of narrative explanation becomes possible. Roth situates narrative explanations within a naturalistic framework and develops a nonrealist (irrealist) metaphysics and epistemology of history—arguing that there exists no one fixed past, but many pasts. The book includes a novel reading of Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, showing how it offers a narrative explanation of theory change in science. This book will be of interest to researchers in historiography, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, and epistemology.

Gardiner approaches the idea of a philosophy of history by first giving an outline of the regularity interpretation of explanation. How far it is possible to regard all historical explanations, or even some, as approximating this pattern, how far the objections philosophers have marshalled against such an assimilation are justified, how far the alternative interpretations suggested correspond to the historian's actual procedure in certain cases; these represent the kind of questions that will have to be considered. By keeping the actual practice of historians constantly in view, he believes that the reader will be able to see some of the disputes that have raged concerning the philosophy of historyin better perspective.

The purpose of Towards a Revival of Analytical Philosophy of History: Around Paul A. Roth's Vision of Historical Sciences is to discuss the revival of analytical philosophy of history proposed by Paul A. Roth. The authors characterize the status of philosophy of history and discuss its ontological, epistemological and explanatory dimensions.

This book deals with theoretical problems that arise at points of contact between the concerns of philosophers and historians about the practice of historiography. In bringing together these critical studies on diverse but related themes, the book offers insight into the aims and methods of those working in theory of historiography in recent years, especially in English-speaking countries.