History in the Humanities and Social Sciences

这是一个合作研究项目，致力于探索历史调查在人文和社会科学中的作用。近几十年来，许多学科都不再把历史观点应用于它们的研究对象。我们的目的是通过阐述从回归历史中获得的智力上的好处，来展示这种趋势是如何有效地逆转的。该网络将重点关注历史在八个学科领域的应用：经济学、政治学、政治理论、国际关系、社会学、哲学、法律和文学。它的主要参与者是根据他们在其指定领域内的专业知识以及他们对历史知识性质的积极关注而被选中的。这种结合将使主要参与者能够检查三个基本问题：(i)历史研究在他们自己的学科中的功能是什么？（ii）这些不同的历史研究模式之间有什么联系？因此，历史研究的目的是什么？历史决定论作为一种理解世界的方法，在16世纪出现在人文研究的各个领域，并在接下来的几百年里继续征服一系列学科：文字学、法理学、政治学、经济学、文学和道德哲学。在19世纪末的德国，历史决定论被视为任何形式的知识的先决条件。然而，20世纪与自然科学相关的研究方法的成功，再加上实证主义的传播和专业化的进步，导致了人文科学和社会科学内部目标的分裂，以及理论和历史理解之间各种形式的两极分化。该项目的首要目标是消除这些两极，确定历史推理的局限性，并将历史专业与激励邻近学科的基本问题重新联系起来。历史研究的预期成果是多种多样的，本质上既有实质性的，也有方法论的。每一种收益都应该得到单独和详细的处理，但即使是一个主要收益的列表也可以大致了解所提议的优势。例如，历史向我们展示了行为是如何受到制约的，选择是如何受到有限选择的约束的，以及结果在多大程度上不是刻意设定目标的产物。同样，它也展示了文化进程是如何相互依存的，以及意义和价值是如何由语境决定的。历史研究还提供了如何在人文科学领域进行因果分析的范例说明；时代错误和预言如何阻碍上下文敏感分析；公正的价值如何服务于严谨的目标；对人类价值的研究与对自然物的研究有何不同；在评估证据时应如何采用关键程序；以及如何明智地权衡相互竞争的证据。我们追求这种合作的目标是展示这些见解如何在人文和社会科学领域做出并继续做出积极贡献。总的来说，我们的共同努力旨在展示刚刚概述的历史实践形式如何构成整个人文科学的重要资产。因此，这个网络相当于对不同探究领域进行历史思考的实验。我们希望鼓励我们如何处理我们的样本学科所面临的许多问题的范式转变。我们的目标是阐明这样一项事业可望带来的红利。简而言之，我们建议列出人文科学新的历史转折所带来的智力优势。

This is a collaborative research project dedicated to exploring the role of historical inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. In recent decades, a range of disciplines have dispensed with applying historical perspectives to their objects of research. Our aim is to show how this tendency can be fruitfully reversed by setting out the intellectual benefits to be drawn from a return to history.The network will focus on the uses of history in eight subject areas: economics, political science, political theory, international relations, sociology, philosophy, law and literature. Its key participants have been selected for their expertise within their designated fields along with their active preoccupation with the character of historical knowledge. This combination will enable the key participants to examine three essential questions: (i) What is the function of historical research within their own disciplines? (ii) What are the connections linking these diverse modes of historical inquiry? (iii) What, therefore, is the purpose of historical study as such?Historicism as an approach to understanding the world emerged in various areas of humanistic study in the sixteenth century, and continued to conquer a range of disciplines over the next few hundred years: philology, jurisprudence, political science, economics, belle lettres, and moral philosophy. By the end of the nineteenth century in Germany, historicism had come to be seen as a precondition for any form of knowledge whatsoever. However, the success of the research methods associated with the natural sciences in the twentieth century, combined with the spread of positivism and the progress of specialisation, have led to a fragmentation of purpose within the humanities and social sciences, and various forms of polarisation between theoretical and historical understanding. The overriding objective of this project is to undo these polarities, ascertain the limits of historical reasoning, and reconnect the historical profession with the fundamental questions that animate adjacent disciplines.The expected gains of historical research are multifarious, and are both substantive and methodological in nature. Each payoff deserves separate and detailed treatment, yet even a list of the primary benefits gives an outline sense of the advantages proposed. For instance, history helps to show us how behaviour has been conditioned, how choices are constrained by the limited options available, and how far outcomes are not the product of deliberately intended goals. Equally it demonstrates how cultural processes are mutually interdependent, and how meanings and values are determined by their contexts. Historical study also offers a paradigmatic illustration of how causal analysis can be conducted in the domain of the human sciences; how anachronism and prolepsis thwart context-sensitive analysis; how the value of impartiality serves the objective of rigour; how the study of human values differs from the treatment of natural objects; how critical procedures should be employed in the evaluation of evidence; and how competing pieces of evidence should be judiciously weighed.Our goal in pursuing this collaboration is to show how these insights have made and continue to make positive contributions across the humanities and social sciences. Cumulatively, our joint effort is designed to show how the forms of historical practice just outlined constitute vital assets across the human sciences. This network therefore amounts to an experiment in thinking historically about diverse domains of inquiry. We hope to encourage a paradigm shift in how we approach many of the problems faced in our sample disciplines. Our objective is to make plain the dividends that can be expected to flow from such an undertaking. In short, we propose to set out the intellectual advantages that can be expected from a new historical turn in the human sciences.