Carr, chp 4 Causation in history

The statement that 'the study of history is the study of causes' is perhaps the most memorable in this book and certainly one I have used in class on many occasions. But to be meaningful the cause must also explain something. Note Carr's example in the first paragraph.

• Herodotus: 'to preserve the memory and to give the cause' still epitomize much of what historians still do.
• What does it mean to 'give the cause'? Assumes that causes, moral, physical, social, economic, etc., can be identified, and that they do explain something.
• In practice: the historian deals with a multiplicity of causes, to fix the relationship between those causes, and then identify the most important [...in the final analysis...]; historians disagree about the priority of causes.
• The simple and the complex. the historian must work through the simplification of the complex, and illustrate the complexity of the simple...no easy task. NOTE also his statement earlier: to find the general in the particular, and extract from the general the particular.

Determinism:

• essentially that everything that happens has a cause or causes, and could not have happened differently unless something in the cause or caues had also been different.
• the dilemma: how to understand the role of free will and deteriminism. "all human actions are both free and determined" whatever can he mean? in terms of assigning moral responsibility?
• the historian begins with the notion that human actions have causes that are in principle ascertainable.
• but that does not mean that historians believe that events are truly inevitable. Esp in the realm of contemporary history, people remember the time when all the options were still open.

Accident and chance = Cleopatra's Nose

• history as a series of accidents...but how can we then discover in history a coherent sequence of cause and effect?
• this kind of theory is most often found in societies in decline
• the theory of compensating and self-cancelling accidents determines history?
• accident also used to explain something we do not understand.
• accidents, Carr concedes, may modify the course of history, but in so far as they are accidents, they do not enter into any rational interpretation

hence, the standard of historical significance is the historian's ability to fint causes into a pattern of rational explanation and interpretation.

• the significance of the explanation depends on whether it can be applied to other historical situations.
• and can lead to fruitful generalizations.
• accidental causes cannot be generalized, and teach no lessons; lead to no conclusions.