Veli Virmajoki

In this book, the issue of causal explanation in historiography, the study of the past, is explored. The term “history” is reserved for the events, processes, and conditions in the past. The main question of the book is what historiography needs to tell about the events, processes, and conditions in the past in order to causally explain a historical outcome. In the philosophy of historiography, accounts of explanation have focused on what kind of connection must hold between some Z (a set of events, processes, and conditions) and X in order for Z to explain X (an outcome). The thing to be explained is called explanandum (X in this case), the thing that explains (Z and some additional information) is called explanans, and the point of investigation is to explicate the structure of explanans and its relation to explanandum in historiography.

In this final chapter, I will discuss the relationship between history and the future from the perspective of causal explanation. The connection between historiography and futures research has been an area of interest in futures research. The topic has also been brought to the spotlight in the philosophy of history recently by Simon and Tamm in their Historical Futures project (2021). We also saw, in Sect. 1.3, how Carr argued that “[i]t is at once the justification and the explanation of history that the past throws light on the future and the future throws light on the past” (1990, 123). I will briefly comment on these topics because they are interesting in their own right (see Simon & Deile, 2022) but also, and more importantly, because they enable us to extract some core lessons from this book and tell why causal thinking in historiography matters in a wider order of things.

When we think about the Eddington case, we can easily get the sense that the outcome was produced by different types of entities and actors, their activities, and their interactions. Eddington was attempting to promote internationalism in science; Einstein was creating a theory to answer certain types of questions and demands; armies were fighting; trenches cut off communication, and so on. Understanding the workings of this network or system enables us to understand the outcome, or so it seems. The same is true of the outbreak of WW1. Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, setting off a chain reaction; Germany, escalating its naval program, instigated fear and tension with Britain; France and Germany were locked in a territorial dispute over Alsace-Lorraine; Austria-Hungary and Serbia were engaged in a political power struggle in the Balkans, and so on.

Even if the linking of narratives with mechanistic explanation has significant shortcomings, the idea that narratives—especially causal narratives—are central in historiography has been strongly supported. Before I delve into the discussion concerning causal narratives, a warning needs to be in place. A difficulty, from the perspective of the philosophy of causal explanation, with the discussion about the nature and role of causal narratives in producing historiographical insights and understanding is that the notion of causality or explanation is usually left unanalyzed when narratives are discussed. Usually, the suggestion does not appear to be that causal narratives are a unique class of causal explanations that are based on—or themselves define—some distinct notion of causality. The debate concerning the nature and role of causal narratives in historiography, therefore, may not provide insights on the conceptual core of the notion causal explanation in historiography. Rather it needs to be discussed because it has produced insights on the issues intimately connected to causal explanations in historiography. To use the language of Sect. 1.1, there are important notions and phenomena connected to the notion causal explanation in historiography to which any account of causal explanation in historiography must be faithful. The discussion about causal narratives reveals exactly such issues and phenomena. This is remarkable because when it comes to philosophical accounts of explanation, “history, and its explanatory narrative mode of argument, remains an outcast in the broader kinship of the sciences” (Morgan, 2017, 86). An account of explanation is underdeveloped as long as it does not discuss the issues that causal narratives reveal.

In this article, I analyze historical counterfactuals. Historical counterfactuals are conditional statements in which the antecedent refers to some change in the past. We ask what would have happened, had that change occurred. I discuss the nature of such counterfactuals. I then identify important functions that historical counterfactuals have. I point out that they are at the heart of explanations and, therefore, reveal issues related to contingency and actual history. I then discuss counterfactual reasoning in historiography. I argue that the problem of suitable antecedent conditions has been exaggerated, and more serious issues concern the tracking of counterfactual scenarios. Throughout the paper, I argue that the interventionist way of thinking about historical counterfactuals clarifies both historical explanations and the nature of historical counterfactuals and should be adopted as the standard. I conclude by noting that historical counterfactuals may not fundamentally differ from more familiar forms of historiography.

The book discusses recent developments in philosophy with regards to how historical events can be explained causally and introduces perspectives from the philosophy of science into the philosophy of history. The book covers the main approaches to causal explanation in history and makes clear the main issues and concepts that are associated with such explanations. For example, the book discusses historical contingency and narratives, among other issues. The book is directed to philosophers of science, philosophers of history, historians, historically oriented social scientists, and everyone who is interested in how we make sense of the past.

In this paper, I analyze how frameworks shape historiographical explanations. I argue that, in order to identify a sequence of events as relevant to a historical outcome, assumptions about the workings of the relevant domain have to be made. By extending Lakatosian considerations, I argue that these assumptions are provided by a framework that contains a set of factors and intertwined principles that (supposedly) govern how a historical phenomenon works. I connect frameworks with a counterfactual account of historical explanation. Frameworks enable us to explain the past by providing a backbone of explanatory patterns of counterfactual dependency. I conclude by noting that both counterfactual scenarios and scenarios of the future require frameworks and, therefore, historiographical explanation generates a set of possible futures. Analyzing these possible futures enables us to reveal the theoretical commitments of historiography.

In this paper, I argue that analyzing pursuitworthiness in science requires that we study possible futures of science. The merits of different criteria of pursuitworthiness need to be assessed against scenarios of the future of science. Different criteria recognize and ignore different scenarios. As a consequence, different criteria enable us to manage different future possibilities. While it might be impossible to predict the future of science, there are still many interesting things we can say about the possible futures of science. We can construct scenarios of the future of science on the basis of philosophical accounts of science. I point out that the topic of pursuitworthiness is not the only topic that can be approached by connecting philosophy of science with the construction of scenarios.

In this paper, the epistemological and conceptual limits of our ability to conceive and reason about future possibilities are analyzed. It is argued that more attention should be paid in futures studies on these epistemological and conceptual limits. Drawing on three cases from philosophy of science, the paper argues that there are deep epistemological and conceptual limits in our ability to conceive and reason about alternatives to the current world. The nature and existence of these limits are far from obvious and become visible only through careful investigation. The cases establish that we often are unable to conceive relevant alternatives; that historical and counterfactual considerations are more limited than has been suggested; and that the present state of affairs reinforces its hegemony through multiple conceptual and epistemological mechanisms. The paper discusses the reasons behind the limits of the conceivability and the consequences that follow from the considerations that make the limits visible. The paper suggests that the epistemological and conceptual limits in our ability to conceive and reason about possible futures should be mapped systematically. The mapping would provide a better understanding of the creative and critical bite of futures studies.

This paper analyses the similarities and connections between philosophy of science and causal layered analysis. The paper points out that philosophy of science can be understood as a kind of causal layered analysis of science. These similarities and connections mean that the insights in philosophy of science can be used to investigate the important but neglected topic of possible futures of science. The connections make it possible (i) to open up the present and past to create alternative futures of science, and (ii) to reveal deep worldview commitments behind surface phenomena in science-related discourses.

Artikkeli on väitöstilaisuudessa esitetty lectio praecursoria. Väitöskirjani käsittelee kysymystä, miten tiedettä voidaan ymmärtää tarkastelemalla sen historiaa. Lectiossa tuon esiin neljä väitöskirjani keskeistä teemaa. Ensinnäkin tieteen historia on osoittautunut monimutkaiseksi prosessiksi. Tämän vuoksi tieteenhistorian on tutkittava monenlaisten syiden yhteisvaikutusta tieteen kehitykseen. Mikään yksittäinen syiden luokka ei auta selittämään kokonaisuutta. Toiseksi esitän, ettei tieteen historiaa voida lähestyä määritelmien tai kategorioiden avulla. Puolustan nykyhetkikeskeistä lähestymistä tieteenhistoriaan, jonka mukaan tieteen historia on se prosessi, joka johti nykyiseen tieteeseen. Se, mikä on osa tieteen historiaa, ei riipu siitä, mitä pidämme tieteenä vaan siitä, millainen historian kausaalikudelma on. Kolmanneksi tuon esiin, että kontrafaktuaalisten skenaarioiden tarkastelu on välttämätöntä historian ymmärtämiselle. Väitän, että vain hallittu jossittelu voi tarjota meille ymmärrystä siitä, miksi historia kehittyi tietyllä tavalla. Neljänneksi argumentoin, ettei tieteen historiaa voida selittää käyttämättä nykyistä tieteellistä, vaikka tällaista jakoa onkin joskus esitetty historiografiseksi hyveeksi. Kaiken kaikkeaan esitän, että tieteen historiaa tarkastelemalla voimme nähdä oman paikkamme osana todellisuuden valtavaa kausaalikudelmaa.

In this paper, I defend causal presentism in the historiography of science. In causal presentism, historiography of science studies events, processes and practices that were causally relevant to the development of present science. I argue that causal presentism has three main virtues: First, causal presentism avoids the conceptual problems the historiography of science has recognized in its core. Secondly, causal presentism provides a clear account of what counts as historical explanatory understanding about science. Thirdly, causal presentism enables novel ways to address several conceptual and methodological problems in the historiography of science. The conclusion is that causal presentism is distinctively strong position with respect to the historiography of science.

In this paper, I offer an explication of the notion of local explanation. In the literature, local explanations are considered as metaphysically and methodologically satisfactory: local explanations reveal the contingency of science and provide a methodologically sound historiography of science. However, the lack of explication of the notion of local explanation makes these claims difficult to assess. The explication provided in this paper connects the degree of locality of an explanans to the degree of contingency of the explanandum. Moreover, the explication is shown to be compatible with the methodological need for a general consideration in the historiography of science. In this way, the explication satisfies the need to explicate an important notion, connects local explanations and contingency, and enables us to see how local explanations and general considerations can be connected. However, the explication also sheds critical light on many claims and expectations that are associated with local explanations and their satisfactoriness.

In this paper, I explicate desiderata for accounts of explanation in historiography. I argue that a fully developed account of explanation in historiography must explicate many explanation-related notions in order to be satisfactory. In particular, it is not enough that an account defines the basic structure of explanation. In addition, the account of explanation must be able to explicate notions such as minimal explanation, complete explanation, historiographical explanation, explanatory depth, explanatory competition, and explanatory goal. Moreover, the account should also tell how explananda can be chosen in a motivated way. Furthermore, the account should be able to clarify notions that are closely connected with explanation such as historical contingency. Finally, it is important that the account is able to recognize when explanation-related notions and issues are so closely intertwined that we are in danger of not seeing the differences between them. In other words, I argue that a satisfactory account of explanation in historiography must have the power to explicate central explanation-related notions and to clarify discussions where the differences between the notions are obscure. In order to explicate these desiderata, I formulate a counterfactual account of explanation and show how that account is able to explicate explanation-related notions and clarify issues that are connected with historiographical explanations. The success of the counterfactual account suggests that historiographical explanations do not differ fundamentally from explanations in many other fields.

In this book, I defend the present-centered approach in historiography of science (i.e. study of the history of science), build an account for causal explanations in historiography of science, and show the fruitfulness of the approach and account in when we attempt to understand science. The present-centered approach defines historiography of science as a field that studies the developments that led to the present science. I argue that the choice of the targets of studies in historiography of science should be directly connected to our values and preferences in an intersubjective process. The main advantage of this approach is that it gives a clear motivation for historiography of science and avoids or solves stubborn conceptual and practical problems within the field. The account of causal explanations is built on the notions of counterfactual scenarios and contrastive question-answer pairs. I argue that if and only if we track down patterns of counterfactual dependencies, can we understand history. Moreover, I define the notions of historical explanation, explanatory competition, explanatory depth, and explanatory resources. Finally, I analyze the existing historiography of science with the framework built in the previous chapter, and I show that this framework clarifies many first-order (i.e. concerning the history of science) and meta-level issues (i.e. concerning the nature of science in general) that historians and philosophers tackle. As an illustration of the philosophical power of the framework, I explicate the notion of local explanation and analyze the question of whether the developments of science were necessary or contingent.

In this paper, I investigate the issue of the contingency and inevitability of science. First, I point out valuable insights from the existing discussion about the issue. I then formulate a general framework, built on the notion of contrastive explanation and counterfactuals, that can be used to approach questions of contingency of science. I argue, with an example from the existing historiography of science, that this framework could be useful to historians of science. Finally, I argue that this framework shows the existing views on historical contingency and counterfactuals in a new light. The framework also shows the value of existing historiography in philosophical debates.