The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge

• Main Author: Mandelbaum, Maurice (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Johns Hopkins University Press 2019
• Subjects: History of Western philosophy; History of philosophy, philosophical traditions
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

Originally published in 1977. In this major work, an overview of the structure of historical writing, Maurice Mandelbaum clarifies some of the problems concerning the nature of history as a discipline, of what constitutes explanation in history, and whether historical knowledge is as reliable as other forms of knowledge. The work is divided into three parts. The first part provides an analytic account of different types of historical inquiry. The second treats at length the nature of causal explanation in everyday life and in science and considers the relation between causes and laws. The final part analyzes the concept of objectivity and estimates both the extent to which the inquiries of historians can be said to be objective and the limits of that objectivity in some types of historical accounts.