The Logic of History

Explaining the Past in the Geosciences

“…Although most geoscientists do not recognise the ancestry of this debate, their concerns are very much in line with the division of sciences and appropriate methodology outlined by Rickert (1986). Rather than having the subsuming of the individual event under some universal explanation as their goal, the reduction of an individual event to a 'law' (Leighton 1904), geoscientists wish to understand and interpret reality in its singularity and individuality. The preoccupation of geoscientists with history means that, although they may refer to the 'laws' of physics and chemistry in their explanations, their aims and methods of explanation are peculiar to an historical science, a science concerned with the concrete (Rickert 1986).…”