Exploring Historical Causation :: World History

Exploring Historical Causation There is a large offspring of theories intimately what causes historical events to happen. And without doubt in that respect ar in item m each different kinds of causes. It seems to me that the danger lies in espousing any one picky type of cause to the exclusion of all others, for there can be few, if any, events of which it can truly be said that they had but one sensation cause. It leave alone however be interesting to see whether we can go up any common thread running through or central some of these theories. Let me clear one bit of undergrowth forrader going further. Many of the views and arguments to the highest degree historical origin bear a strong resemblance to arguments about free will and determinism. It is not practical totally to isolate a discussion of historical causes from this wider question, but it will be helpful if we concentrate our minds on the matter of likely or demonstrable reasons why certain things happened, an d as far as we are able, avoid a tendency to collapse the argument back into any views we may hold on determinism. In offering this warning, I am encouraged by E H Carrs comment that arguments about stroke in history are not to be confused with arguments about determinism. What then have historians and philosophers of history thought were the factors in historical causation? There are the big ideas of history, which we might call Great Causes. The mention is long. There is the Will of God the cyclical nature of history the repetitive Hegelian process by which Man moves progressively towards the ideal maintain of liberty and self-awareness similar ideas in Eastern philosophy the Marxist frugal variant of Hegels ideas the everlasting law of the Stoics Adam Smiths invisible hand covert Darwinian evolution Montesquieus belief that history is the dissolving agent of geography and climate. And there is chaos theory while this is in large measure about endless random happenings, the y are nonetheless supposed to be contained in spite of appearance some overall scheme. The flap of a butterflys wings may result in a hurricane a week later, but according to the theory, that is to be seen as a random event which triggers off something taking key within this wider context. It is not difficult to ridicule rigid interpretations of Great Causes, and Bertrand Russell memorably did so when he traced the cause of industrialism back by way of Galileo and Copernicus, of the Renaissance, the hang up of Constantinople and the migration of the Turks, to the dessication of Central Asia.