Explanation and Interpretation in History

Abstract

Historians, philosophers, and men of affairs frequently raise questions about the “meaning” of history, or of selected segments of history, and frequently disagree about the relative merits of competing interpretations of specific historical periods or of the historical process as a whole. Such discussions are anything but idle. They affect what historians and others say about the past, and, in doing so, they influence the construction of social policies in the present. Indeed, they affect the very quality of a culture. For the view that a group of people hold towards their past is one of the controlling factors in their morals, religion, art, and intellectual pursuits, to say nothing of the sights, sounds, and actual feel of their daily experience.

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