Author : Paul A. Roth
Release : 2019-10-15
Genre : Philosophy
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 896/5 ( reviews)
Book Synopsis The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation by : Paul A. Roth
Download or read book The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation written by Paul A. Roth. This book was released on 2019-10-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation, Paul A. Roth resolves disputes persisting since the nineteenth century about the scientific status of history. He does this by showing why historical explanations must take the form of a narrative, making their logic explicit, and revealing how the rational evaluation of narrative explanation becomes possible. Roth situates narrative explanations within a naturalistic framework and develops a nonrealist (irrealist) metaphysics and epistemology of history—arguing that there exists no one fixed past, but many pasts. The book includes a novel reading of Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, showing how it offers a narrative explanation of theory change in science. This book will be of interest to researchers in historiography, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, and epistemology.