Causal Explanation and Imaginative Re-Enactment

Abstract

Advocates of the use of method in social and historical studies often do their cause more harm than good. Perhaps the main root of the trouble is the very term scientific a phrase which may seem to promise a new branch of knowledge on the lines of physics, chemistry or biology. But even if we could get rid of these words and banish all envious thoughts of the natural sciences, the student of society who reflects on what he is doing would sooner or later be confronted with the essential problem. How far can we go in identifying uniformities in human and social behavior? Can we discover causal connections between types of events? Can we frame general statements describing such connections which can be used to explain events in the past or even to predict events in the future? To favor method means at least that one is inclined to give affirmative answers to these questions. Advocates of method, however, often state their case in such a way as to discourage an affirmative response. Two sources of the difficulty underlie the main themes of this paper. One is the attempt to hold up as a guide for research what may be called the universalist model of causal explanation, a model which has been barren of success and which cannot fail to daunt the social scientist who takes it seriously. A second is the tendency to assert that the method of causal explanation excludes the approach of traditional history, specifically the method of imaginative re-enactment. In opposition to these views, I should like to contend first, that method holds much promise for social and historical studies and I shall try to elicit some of the procedures appropriate to that subject-matter but it needs to be protected against the misleading dogma of universality. Second, I should like to argue that the method of imaginative re-enactment, far from being opposed to the method of causal explanation, is in important respects complementary to it. In developing these points, I shall hinge my remarks on a critique of the papers by Professors Tilly and Walzer, not simply asserting what seems to me to be abstractly correct, but trying to elicit the methods and procedures which these writers have successfully used in works of substantive research. In short, I am addressing myself to this hoary problem of