Colligation and Classification in History

Abstract

W. H. Walsh's greatest contribution to analytical philosophy of history has possibly been identification of colligatory terms and investigation of their functions in historical writing. Walsh noticed that there is one way in which historians make historical events intelligible which differs markedly from way scientists explain natural events. Whereas scientists, according to Walsh, understand events by classifying them and then subsuming them under causal laws, historians often look instead for inner relationships between event to be explained and other events which came before and after it, thus discovering a particular process of historical change of which it was a part.' Colligatory terms identify processes of historical change by which individual events are colligated. The process of historical change identified by a colligatory term, Walsh said, was a sequence or group of events related by common ideas or values they expressed. Where these ideas formed a specific plan, purposively carried out in a sequence of actions, then colligation of those actions by reference to that plan provided a teleological explanation of them. As an example of this form of colligation Walsh explained how by mentioning Hitler's policy of German self-assertion and expansion an historian could colligate and partly explain steps he took in carrying out that policy, such as repudiation of unilateral disarmament, German withdrawal from League of Nations, absorption of Austria and incorporation of Sudetenland. If ideas expressed in a group of events did not constitute a plan but simply a set of values and principles, then by colligating events through reference to those values historian provided what Walsh called a semi-teleological explanation of them. As examples of movements and periods which have expressed different sets of values and principles, and by reference to which individual events have been colligated, Walsh listed the Enlightenment, Romantic