EVIDENCE FOR THE PAST

THE WHAT AND THE WHY OF HISTORY: PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS. By Leon J.

Goldstein. Leiden, New York, Cologne: E. J. Brill 1996. Pp. xiii, 351.
Leon Goldstein, a professor of philosophy, not a historian, has brought together
nineteen essaysas he prefers to call themon the philosophy of history, dating back to 1958. They were originally published in a variety of journals and
anthologies, four in History and Theory. He could at no time presume that the
readers of a particular essay were acquainted with his other so-scattered articles.
Repetitions in the published collection are therefore inevitable. More seriously,
since the essays were published over so long a period of time, one can find it hard
to tell if one comes across sentences in different essays that seem to be inconsistent whether this represents a change of mind or is a real inconsistency. But such
occasions are very rare; one can generally rely upon Goldstein to stick to his initial assertions.
If I mention philosophy of history to my history colleagues I do not find it
greeted with enthusiasm. Ask them what history is and they will reply what
we do although that is notably different from what they did twenty years ago,
cultural history largely having replaced political history. (I shall write history for the subject, history for what happened, although Goldstein sometimes
writes as if these are identical.)
There is at least one respect, however, in which my colleagues would agree
with Goldstein. His book, in a manner partly reflected in his title, is divided into
three segments Why, What, and Collingwood. Like many of us from the
past, he at first thought of explanationhe was a pupil of Hempelas the main
problem for philosophers of history. But now his emphasis is on what rather
than why, description rather than explanation. Hempel had been anxious to
save history as an intellectual activity by showing that in spite of appearances
to the contrary it explained by appealing to covering laws and so was
respectably scientific. In these postmodernist days, being like science is no
longer a recommendation; some rejoice in treating history as a form of literature. But even those historians who despise postmodernism describe what
rather than why.
There may be other reasons than the rejection of scientism for the switch from
why. A recent reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement of a book on the history of Glasgow congratulates the author for not attempting to offer explanations
of its ups and downs. It is hard enough, the reviewer says, for historians to find
out what happened; finding out why is an impossibly difficult task. Certainly
when I listen to papers read in history seminars I listen in vain, in my old-fash-

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ioned way, for a why but can find the what interesting enough. In general, of
course, there is growing skepticism about social laws except, and then only to
a degree, in the case of the simpler economic laws. Sociology is content with statistics, describing what is happening or happened at a particular time.
Few historians would approve, however, of either of two leading theses developed by Goldstein, which begin his book in an essay entitled Historical Past and
Real Past. The first sentence in this essay refers to Collingwood, as does the last
sentence in the book. What lies between, indeed, entitles Goldstein to be regarded as a member of the Collingwood Revival Society, even if, not uniquely, by
no means all his fellow members accept his interpretations. The Collingwood
thesis is that all history is present history; the secondGoldsteinthesis is that
the starting point of historical inquiry is a body of evidence. The first statement
always puzzles me. To be sure, some of the things it could mean are obviously
true. One is that history is always written at a particular time, at what is, for it,
the present. The historian Kenneth Clark advised history students to look very
carefully at the date of any history book they are reading, this being a date as
important as any in the book. A history book, he was saying, can only report
historical knowledge as it was when the book was writtenits present. He is not
advising against reading such books. Indeed no alternative may lie open. He was
only saying that they cannot report our, as distinct from their, present state of
knowledge.
Another interpretation is that a history written at a particular time is bound
in some measure to reflect some of the attitudes of that, their present, time. So
we can choose to read it as exhibiting what was happening at its present, even
though what it is officially writing about is the past. So we can read Gibbon not
to read about the Roman Empire but as an example of what I call the pessimistic
Enlightenment, made explicit in his description of history as little more than
a register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
Yet another possible interpretation is that history always fulfills demands of
the present, demands which are not stable. So when considerable changes occur
in a society, there is always a demand that history be rewritten. Not long ago
in Australia the general view was that the indigenous peoples would soon die out
and in any case they had never really inhabited Australia, that Australia, before
the British arrived, was terra nullius, an empty land. So early histories of
Australia left them out of the picture, except in the case of occasional individuals who helped the explorers. Now the situation has changed and Australians, or
many of them, have developed a conscience in respect to the treatment of the
indigenous peoples and have become much more conscious of their beliefs and
their artistic gifts. In consequence there is a demand that history be rewritten.
Similarly, though to a lesser degree, historians ignored women, but today there
is a demand that history be rewritten to pay more attention to their contributions. There are demands elsewhere for the rewriting of historyin France,
Germany, Japan, and Russiato satisfy the present-day conscience about the
past as described in their histories. The Australian Prime Minister, John

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Howard, has protested against the new historical work, describing it as black
armband history. He obviously believes that histories should help to make
present-day citizens proud of their past. There have been similar protests in
Japan, in some cases reaching the point of arguing that nothing exists except the
present. The world was created yesterday.
There are obviously many ways then of arguing that all history is present
history. But I do not think that any of them represents Goldsteins position; I
do not find that my considering alternative interpretations has led me any nearer
to understanding him. He is not, I feel sure, following the Australian Prime
Minister in arguing that history is simply the past as the present would like it
to have been. But such negations still leave me baffled about what Goldstein does
mean unless it is simply that history can only represent the past as seen by the
present, the historical past, in consequence, inevitably being different from the
real past. The constant rewriting of history might be taken to support that view;
Goldstein appeals to changes over time in scientific theory to argue that just as
the world does not change when a theory changesthis showing, he says, that
scientific theories are always present pictures of the world, there being no way
of comparing them with the actual worldsimilarly there can be no way of comparing present-day histories of England, let us say, with what really happened.
Some of these interpretations Goldstein rejects in passing, but I confess to still
not being at all confident about what he means. Perhaps it is nothing more than
that since history is of a past which is gone foreverhis examples are all from
relatively remote past timeshistorians cannot do anything of the sort suggested in such statements as history reveals the past or gives us access to it. He
does not go so far as the Japanese statement suggesting that there is no such thing
as the past, which I take to be a piece of adviceforget the past. The present of course is a tricky notion. Does it mean the passing moment, so that I shall
have to think that I have already passed through innumerable presents this
morning and that to describe what I ate at breakfast would be to describe the past,
or is it a longer period, as it is certainly employed in such phrases as presentday morals. Much of the past, too, is still with us, in the form, for example, of
the principal religions, the American Constitution, and so on. To take a very trivial example, I recently wrote a criticism of the view that Sydney, Australia, was
in the 1930s a cultural desert. I appealed first of all to my own, and my wifes,
memory. My remembering was something that occurred in what was then the
present. But am I to say that my memory must be of the present? That would
destroy the distinction between memory and perception. I also, to check my
memorywhich I knew from past experience was by no means wholly reliablelooked at programs, newspaper reviews, the clothes of the then-visiting
Russian ballet, which were held in the art gallery. Was I not, in looking at them,
looking at things that were both past and present?
Goldstein quotes more than once a passage from the sociologist George H.
Meade that the estimate and import of all histories lies in the interpretation and
control of the present and that as ideational structures they always arise from

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change (5, note 1). I have myself granted that as attitudes to our indigenous peoples change so does in some respects the history of Australia change, not without political opposition. But much of earlier histories remains in essence
untouched. The rise of popularism can lead to historians discussing topics they
previously left untouched but, listening to papers from this area, I cannot say that
the content of the papers, as distinct from the choice of topics, is politically determined. Nor my own little piece, which arose in the course of writing a memoir.
To turn now to the secondpurely Goldsteinclaim about evidence.
Ordinary people, he is willing to admit, think of history as offering them a narrative account about the past, more accurate, if usually less exciting, than what
the historical novelist presents us with. But, Goldstein tells us, the historians
task, far from being storytelling, is to make sense out of evidence. His examples
of such evidence are things which do not seem to fit into the present texture of
culture and life, writings that most of us cannot read, coins that will buy nothing
at the grocery, ruins of buildings and entire cities and so on (4). When historians succeed this is not by way of putting us in touch with the past, which is no
longer there to be put in touch with, but simply by explaining the evidence.
His examples suggest the archaeologist rather than the historian, just as his
later references to Ezekiel would normally be taken to belong to the world of biblical criticism rather than history, although it can be admitted that the two are
often intertwined, and particularly were so in the nineteenth century when F. H.
Bradley wrote his The Presuppositions of Critical History (1874). But let us look
at Goldsteins examples in the light of what historians for the most part do.
Suppose a historian discovers on the streets of New York a coin which is not
legal currency in the USA. Suppose further that the only other obvious feature
about it is that it is a low value coin. Then the historian might throw it back on
the street, tidily into the gutter, or take it home for children to look at, or try to
sell it at a collectors shop. Of itself it is not being treated as evidence. But suppose the historian is in Antarctica and has a belief that the Russians made a secret
journey there in 1935, and finds there a Russian coin of the appropriate date, or
hears of its being found, then at once it is transformed into being evidence.
Consider Goldsteins writings that most of us cannot read. Most of us can
read only a few languages. In fact the vast majority of people can read only one
language. It does not automatically set the historians mind to work to discover
the meaning of something written in a language that the historian is unable to
read. Of course, if no one knows the language it sets a task for excellent code
readers, although it can also be helpful if they have historical knowledge. As for
ruined buildings and cities, these naturally arouse our curiosity: is this the effect
of an earthquake, or an invasion, or of a climatic change? Then we go in search
of evidence to enable us to choose among these hypotheses, perhaps to rule them
all out so that we have to begin speculating again. The strange thing is that
Goldstein, without indicating disagreement, cites the Collingwood of The Idea of
History where he says that nothing is evidence except in relation to some definite question (137). But Goldstein still stands by the view that the logical func-

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tion of the constituted event is to explain the evidence, even though he admits
to being unable to say precisely what this logical relationship is (204). This
admission comes at the end of a lengthy paper entitled Towards a Logic of
Historical Constitution (171-206) which contains the most extensive development of these views through the study of a particular case.
That case is the discovery in the town of Kensington, Minnesota, of a stone
found in the foot of a tree. It appeared to be a stone marked with runes. Goldstein
calls this the evidence. I would describe it as creating problems. Are these
marks actually runes or just accidental marks? Suppose it is discovered, as actually happened in this case, that if the marks are read as runes they offer a description of nearby lakes. That makes it more likely that they are runes rather than
accidental marks, as could be produced, for example, by childish play.
But then a new problem is set. Who could possibly have produced them in
Kensington, given that the Norse only made their way to the Eastern coast? A
new factor enters the case with the publication (1969) of Hjalmar F. Holands
Norse Discoveries in America 9821362. For it now appears that the Norse penetrated much further into America than had previously been supposed. At long
last the runes become evidence, evidence that at least one Norseman had gotten
as far as Kensington. One no longer has to invent unbelievable stories to account
for the existence of the runed stone; its author was leaving useful information for
his fellow Norsemen. Goldstein gets into logical agonies trying to explain the
movement from what he sees as in itself evidence and the history of which it
now forms partunsuccessfully trying out induction, deduction, and finally the
somewhat obscure Peircian abduction. But with the analysis I have offered no
such problem arises. There is a series of speculations; the logic involved is that
of hypothetical arguments.*
Goldstein likes to think of himself as following the same kind of line as Kuhn,
writing about what historians actually do as distinct from what philosophers have
supposed them to do. But I cannot see that he succeeds in this particular reform.
In practice, evidence enters into the historians work in a variety of ways.
Historians, for one reason or another, become skeptical of a received account, say
of the historical importance of the Magna Carta, or the conduct of Richard III or
of the time at which its native peoples entered Australia, or of the motives lying
behind the American War of Independence, or of the papal attitude to the Nazi
movement, or of the reputation of Florence Nightingale as a secular saint or . . .
Evidence, as often as not, is a weapon in the very common battles between historians. Goldstein is, of course, familiar with such battles, citing the opposing
* By an extraordinary coincidencehistory cannot deny their existence, troublesome as they
may bejust as I finally prepared this review for submission, my breakfast reading of the local paper
revealed a review of The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. The review told me that the theory that Vikings had penetrated into the North American mainland, based on the notorious runic stone
discovered at Kensington in Minnesota, has been authoritatively rejected as a misguided attempt
to predate the discovery of America centuries before Columbus. So it looks as if the historians evidence can turn out to be planted. Whether it was or not in this case, the hypothetical nature of historical speculation remains the case.

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interpretations of the 1670s dispute between the new governor of Virginia, Sir
William Berkeley, and the settler Nathaniel Bacon (240).
Some view Berkeley as an oppressor and Bacon as protecting the rights of the
settlers; on the opposing view, Bacon was greedy and the governor was trying to
restrain the workings of that greed. Goldstein uses this example against the view
that writing history is just a matter of retailing established facts, and one can have
no objection to his doing so. But the more interesting question is how such controversiesor the other controversies mentioned aboveare conducted.
Historians are certain to have political leaningsin favor, say, of established
authorities, revolutionaries, American settlers, or British governance. One can, I
think, safely say that historians would not have become historians or be fascinated by history if they had no such interests, at least when they are the sort of
people who write what we call history simpliciter, as distinct from historians
of. (I am inclined to think that contemporary style cultural history should be
regarded as a species of history of, as is the case of most of my own work.)
To see historians at work, as to see philosophers at work, is to see them
engaged in actual or potential controversies and to see more clearly the role of
evidence. I do not want to suggest that, as some suppose, history and philosophy
simply are permanent controversies. Historians and philosophers can learn from
each other, can cooperate in a publication. But it is in their controversies that one
most clearly sees what their subjects demand from them. Goldstein briefly refers
to contemporary German historians who are a splendid example of historical
controversialists with special motives (sometimes to preserve the traditional picture of the German people, as other historians are trying to preserve the reputation of the Vatican or of Stalin). In some such cases evidence is concealed,
archives kept closed, and the refusal to allow access to them ensures that some
controversies can never be settled. Cases where the historians nevertheless go
ahead with bold assertions rather than confess to limitations in their evidence do
the reputation of history no good. Of course, for those who argue that history is a form of literature, simply, there is no problem involved.
A term of abuse that regularly recurs in the essays is realist. One finds this,
too, in Collingwood where its antithesis is idealist. Collingwood was teaching
in Oxford University, which had been for a considerable time the center of a
German-style idealism. He hated to see Oxford taken over by philosophers who
laid some claim to being realists, although one might question whether their
claim could be fully sustained. For Collingwood, whose idealism was distinctly
Italian, realism was identified with what Russell was to call logical atomism,
while idealism was holisticfor it, everything could be understood only as part
of a total whole. Goldstein, however, seems to identify realism with the correspondence theory of truth, so that a realist referring to a sentence in someones
history as true would mean that it presents an accurate picture of what happened. And since what happened no longer exists there is no way of determining
whether it is in fact true.

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As a realist, I would say that there is no single way, but rather many different
ways, of determining whether a historical statement is true, granting that in a particular case none of them may be available. Wanting to know whether a particular statement is true, I may sometimes refer to a photograph or filmalthough
taking it for granted that photographs can be faked and film material may be
totally unreliable. Who would count the Richard the Third film as evidence that
he was a villain? Documentaries may or may not be reliable. One can consult
documents, read other books, listen to witnesses and so on. As I said earlier, disputing the view that Sydney in the 1930s was a total cultural desert I began from
my own and my wifes memories but went in search of programs, newspaper
reports, and, of course, relevant statements in memoirs. I should pay no attention,
however, to someone who told me that it must have been a desert because this
was a stage it had to go through as a post-colonial country, any more than I paid
attention to the distinguished Russian physicist who told me not many years ago
in Moscow that this is bound to become a perfect country; it is just a matter of
logic. Such views are products of idealism.
This remark leads up to the final group of Goldsteins essayson
Collingwood. His interpretation of Collingwood, like everybody elses interpretation of Collingwood, has been subject to criticism but at least it is thoroughgoing in its range. We meet not only Collingwood the philosopher but also the historian, we meet his views as they change over time. Goldstein sees Roman
Britain as exceptional in its attempt to tell us how and why the Roman walls were
built and why they differ so considerably in structure. At least one undergraduate, myself, found Collingwoods book not only illuminating but exciting, in contrast with other writings on Roman Britain. Goldstein recreates this excitement
and helps to explain it. To follow him critically through his full account of
Collingwoods often puzzling shifts of mind is impossible in the course of a brief
review. One prevailing weakness, however, runs throughout Goldsteins
Collingwood essays. He quotes from Collingwoods autobiography a passage in
which he complains that he is supposed to be a resurrected T. H. Green. That
protest is fully justified; he was not. But Collingwood in his Autobiography is
silent on the very different Italian idealists, for all that his essay on Croce might
well be supposed to be a description of his own work. One of his teachers, now
forgotten, was J. A. Smith, very different in his teaching from Green or Bradley,
an idealist of the Italian kind, in contrast with what one might call the static idealism of that time at both Oxford and Cambridge. Collingwoods interests are
illustrated in the fact that he translated two books by Croce as well as Ruggieros
account of what was then contemporary philosophy.
The importance of all this is that Collingwoods concept of thinking is very
different from the concept of it in traditional empiricism for which thinking goes
on within the head, thus raising, as Collingwood pointed out, all sorts of impossible problems about how we can possibly know what goes on in the minds of
other people. It does not follow, of course, that such phrases as I dont know
what he is thinking are never correct. Collingwood argues that if a person fails

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in an endeavor, it can be impossible to know what is being, or had been, thought.

Goldsteins discussion of Collingwood is in many ways thorough but his failure
to relate him to Italian idealism creates a gap.
The difficulty of reviewing this wide-ranging book is increased by the absence
of a subject index, making it very difficult to find again passages the centrality of
which is not, at a first reading, at once evident. I have had no option but to take
up just a few topics. These topics, however, are of great importance to the philosophy of history. It is a very serious book that deserves to be reviewed with
equal seriousness. I strongly recommend the reading of the essays just because
they are so deeply concerned with fundamental issues that are often overlooked
or simplified. If I criticize it is not out of contemptfar from it. Goldstein has
led me into areas that I have never previously penetrated. In my earlier writings
on objectivity and explanation my main concern, like Hempels, was to bring out
the seriousness of history as a form of inquiry. Goldstein leads us into more
fundamental issues.
JOHN PASSMORE
The Australian National University