Understanding History: An Introduction to Analytical Philosophy of History

R. Douglas Francis is a history professor at the University of Calgary.

What is history? And how do historians go about writing history? These
are the two questions that philosopher Jonathan Gorman attempts to
answer in Understanding History. Unlike previous introductory books on
the subject, Gorman’s attempts to deal with the two often
contradictory concepts of “history”—namely, the historical past
itself (the events that historians study) and the study of that past
(the practice and writings of historians).

According to Gorman, one “cannot distinguish clearly between the
understanding of the historical past itself and the understanding of the
practices and writings of historians, because historical practices and
writings are a central way of expressing for us what counts as the
historical past and what counts as its understanding.” Thus, for
Gorman the central question is whether historians can provide knowledge
about a historical reality, and, indeed, whether that historical reality
actually exists independently of what the historians perceive it to be.
This in turn raises two larger questions: what is “reality” for the
historian studying the past, and how does the historian go about
studying that “reality” if it does exist?

In attempting to answer these questions, Gorman uses a concrete example
from American history (American slavery) and a particular approach to
the subject (econometric history), although at no time does he feel the
need to explain or justify either his subject or his approach. His
chapter titles (“Knowledge,” “Reality,” “Traditional
History,” “Rational Economic Man,” and “Economic Reality”) are
a fair indication of his failure to integrate his two subjects,
philosophy and history. Like so many other books on the philosophy of
history, this one divorces theory from practice and ends up speaking
more to philosophers of history than to practising historians. Although
the book offers occasional flashes of insight, it makes for ponderous
reading and fails to move the debate beyond what the established
philosophers of history have had to say on the subject.