The procedure of explanation in historical research
pp. 536-586
in: , Methodology of history, Berlin, Springer, 1976Abstract
It has been said that to a factographic question (what was?) we answer by establishing facts, and to an explanatory question (why was it so?), by offering a causal explanation. Even though the historian's research procedures can be reduced to answers to these two types of questions (if we disregard for the time being questions about laws), yet the various intuitive interpretations associated with the term "explanation" reauire some comments.