Speculation, history, speculative history

摘要

Speculations, conjectures, suppositions, opinions – we encounter them all in history and everyday life. Yet do speculations land us chiefly in the realm of Carr's ‘parlour games’ and ‘might-have-been's’? To what extent does our historical reasoning admit multiple possibilities of what might have occurred at a point in time? When offering explanations and interpretations of events, actions, and processes, we make such claims through the use of selective evidence, choosing to pursue one angle over another, one alternative over other ones that might not fit as harmoniously with what we consider plausible possibilities. Our willingness to accept one explanation over another or our decision to accept several possible explanations at the same time are linked to our ‘ability to accept the rationality of the unobserved’ (Okasha 2000 Okasha, S. 2000. “Van Fraassen's Critique of Inference to the Best Explanation.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 31 (4): 691–710. doi: 10.1016/S0039-3681(00)00016-9[Crossref], [Web of Science ?], [Google Scholar], 693) and emphasise our bounded rationality. From inference to the best explanation may seem like child's play but it also grounds much of what we do as historians (Gelfert 2010 Gelfert, A. 2010. “Reconsidering the Role of Inference to the Best Explanation in the Epistemology of Testimony.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 41 (4): 386–396. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2010.10.001[Crossref], [Web of Science ?], [Google Scholar]; van der Dussen 2016 van der Dussen, J. 2016. Studies on Collingwood, History and Civilization. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]).