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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
The sub-title of this essay might very well be: “A Study in the Biology and Mechanics of Historical Research and Interpretation”. A study in biology because historians can be divided into two classes: invertebrates and vertebrates. The invertebrate historians are those who have inarticulate major premises; the vertebrate historians are those having articulate major premises. A study in mechanics because analysis of historical thought reveals that the principle of least action holds literal sway so far as many historians' critical awareness of their assumptions is concerned.
This paper was presented before the Fourth Conference on Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences at the New School for Social Research on Nov. 27, 1938. I hope to elaborate the points made here in a volume on the logic of historical inquiry and interpretation.
1 Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers (6 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1931-35), V, 268. He adds in a footnote: “Fate means merely that which is sure to come true, and can nohow be avoided. It is a superstition to suppose that a certain sort of events are ever fated, and it is another to suppose that the word fate can never be freed from its superstitious taint. We are all fated to die.”
2 Cf. John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York, 1938), 442-462.
3 For a somewhat fuller discussion of Beard's views, see my article on “The Historian's Approach to Psychology,” Journal of the History of Ideas, January 1941.
4 “What is science? The dictionary will say that it is systematized knowledge. Dictionary definitions, however, are too apt to repose upon derivations; which is as much as to say that they neglect too much the later steps in the evolution of meanings. Mere knowledge, though it be systematized, may be a dead memory; while by science we all habitually mean a living and growing body of truth. ... That which constitutes science, then, is not so much correct conclusions, as it is a correct method. But the method of science is itself a scientific result. It did not spring out of the brain of a beginner: it was a historic attainment and a scientific achievement. So that not even this method ought to be regarded as essential to the beginnings of science. That which is essential, however, is the scientific spirit, which is determined not to rest satisfied with existing opinions, but to press on to the real truth of nature. To science once enthroned in this sense, among any people, science in every other sense is heir apparent.” C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, VI, 302.