What is History?

Extract

In a recent paper Professor John Macmurray has attacked illegitimate extensions of the use of the word ‘history’. He contends that strictly speaking the solar system cannot be said to have a history, though we can speak of a history of astronomy. This is so because history is concerned with what men have done, why they did it and their doing of it. He is not, I think, suggesting that one cannot carry on fruitful discussions in one sphere by making use of simple analogies drawn from another; as for instance, when the search for significant new resemblances leads us to speak of ‘x’ as if it were ‘y’, and in this way to talk about the unknown on the analogy of the known. Examples of this method are the ‘clock’ and ‘pump’ analogies of the seventeenth century, or the more recent use by biologists of ‘government offices’ and such like as concepts of illustration. All this is not denied, but the ‘as if’ is stressed, for the danger of this kind of thinking is that it tends to confuse the picture or model with that which it is intended to exemplify.

There is a further point to be made. It is helpful, though in some cases dangerous, to use ‘pictures’ which stimulate the formation of partial exploratory hypotheses. It is less helpful, and even more perilous, to commit oneself to a master ‘picture’, for in doing so we become impatient of distinctions and unscrupulous in our manipulation of evidence. For Professor Macmurray history is an enquiry into the past actions of human beings. This statement, which seems so straightforward at first sight, is in fact very difficult, as it raises the question of what it is that we study when we study history.