Walter Fales - Historical Facts

Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
Historical Facts
Author(s): Walter Fales
Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Feb. 15, 1951), pp. 85-94
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
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VOLUMEXLVIII, No. 4 FEBRUARY 15, 1951
THE JOURNALOF PHILOSOPHY
HISTORICAL FACTS
IT is the primary task of the historian to report historical facts.
But what are historical facts? How can they be reported?
Why is anyone interested in them? The following is an attempt at
makina some contribution to each of those three questions.
Definition: A historical fact is an event which influences the

minds of people so as to bring about unique, irreversible changes
in their pattern of thinking, initiating an indefinite series of notice-
able effects upon their style of living.
This definition must be considered both in the light of what it
includes and what it excludes. An interesting group among the
excluded facts are non-events of the type: " The fact that Hannibal,
in 216, failed to attack the city of Rome is of great importance."
Statements of this kind are suggestive of counterfactuals like: "If
Hannibal had conquered Rome, history would have taken quite a
different course." Professor Chisholm and Professor Goodman"
have recently shown that a counterfactual like "If the vase was
dropped it would have broken" derives its significance from the
general statement that all vases break if they fall. Unfortunately,
historians are unable to formulate universal laws which could give
support to historical counterfactuals. They can not reliably figure
out what would have happened if Hannibal had conquered Rome,
and all they venture to say is that history would have taken a dif-
ferent course. Historical counterfactuals are utterly vague, yet
neither meaningless nor pointless. In fact, historical sense is noth-
ing better than sensitivity to the suggestive power of vague "what-
if " and " what-if-not " judgments. But the hypothetical facts they
point at are not historical facts because they have never taken
place.
1 Roderick M. Chisholm, "The Contrary-To-Fact Conditional," i Mind,
Vol. LV (1946), pp. 289-307; Nelson Goodman, "The Problem of Counter-
factual Conditionals," this JOURNAL, Vol. XLIV (1947), pp. 113-128. See
also Elizabeth Lane Beardsley, " Non-Accidental and Counterfactual Sen-
tences," this JOURNAL, Vol. XLVI (1949), pp. 573-591.
85
86 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Among possible objections to the given definition attention may

be drawn to a circularity it conceals. Reference is made to changes
in a style of living, or, as we may call it, in a culture. But the
successive phases of a culture can not as such be strung before
we have some notion of what that culture may be, and how can we
have that notion before we have understood some of the phases? It
seems that we alternately use the scheme of a culture as a frame
of reference which allows us to spot the cultural significance of
historical facts, and then, in turn, use those interpreted facts for
nurturing the nearly-empty scheme of a culture into a more con-
crete image. This mutual dependence of methodical equipment and
subject-matter presents an uncomfortable situation unless we work
out an epistemology in which any fact, at any time, may be used as
a methodical device, and any methodical device, at any time, may
be considered as a fact. How this can be done, I have tried to show
elsewhere, but I admit that the definition of historical fact is vague
on the question of whether the conception of a culture is prior to, or
derivative from, the conception of particular events which can be
classified as historical facts.
II
How can historical facts be reported? In order to bring this
question into focus, let us discuss the distinction between descrip-
tion and report. As the terms are used in this paper, things and
conditions are described, events are reported. By "things" are
meant any static entities characterizable by their qualities, and by
conditions, any static relations which exist between things. This
crude distinction will suffice for our purpose. As is obvious from
the outset, the difference between a description of things or con-
ditions and a report on events originates in their different relation
to time. Logicians may formalize thing-expressions and event-ex-
pressions so as to establish specious equivalences between them.2
They are prone to transform "Caesar conquered Gaul'" into
"Caesar was the conqueror of Gaul" or "Conquering Gaul was
Caesar 's achievement. " They exorcise the time which runs through
events by the use of nouns which have an appearance of stability,
and, indeed, for many purposes this quid pro quo is a useful
substitution. In historiography, the method is treacherous. The
2 See, for instance, how Professor Hans Reichenbach, in Elements of
Symbolic Logic, New York, 1947, pp. 272 ff., handles the "thing-splitting" and
''event-splitting" of situations. There is more in this chapter which has ref-
erence to our problems. But in spite of its ingenuity, the book may serve as
an example showing how far logic still is from serving the needs of the his-
torian.
HIISTORICAL FACTS 87
activity of conquering a country can be clocked; the achievement of

its conquest can be dated but not clocked.3 Expressions of his-
torical events can not be reduced to equivalent thing-expressions.
The historian must insist on the difference between description and
report.
Description. When I make a statement like "My house is
white, " what I mean is that my house is (among other things) white.
The "other things," if analyzed, might include whatever can be
predicated of the house. A full statement about it would have the
form
S is P1 and P2 and P3 and P4 and....
The P's would include both qualities and relations. Their number
would be indefinite if S is my house or, indeed, any individual. We
can describe things with any degree of accuracy but never with
perfect accuracy, since we can not exhaust the number of P's.
If we arbitrarily limit the number of P's, S ceases to be a par-
ticular and becomes a concept, probably applicable to many things
and permitting us to classify them. All P 's are concepts. The use-
fulness of concepts works in two opposite directions: By eliminating
P's we get away from particulars and closer to generalizations and
universal laws, by adding P's we get away from generalizations and
closer to identification and analyzed knowledge of particulars.
The scientist, ordinarily, is more interested in generalization.
He is carrying on descriptions to a certain point only and forgets,
as irrelevant, the sum total of P's which remain unexpressed. This
is his first step, called abstraction. Pushing further in the direc-
tion toward generalization he replaces P's which denote qualities
by those which denote relations. This is the second step which
changes descriptions into explanations. If this process could be
carried to the extreme, nothing would be left unexplained within
the universe of things and conditions, but nothing would be left
either which had been explained. Every thing would be simplified
until there were no thing. For practical reasons the scientist re-
turns to the things and manipulates them in terms of what the re-
duction has taught him. Knowledge becomes power, things be-
come means.
In the descriptive sciences, the emphasis on generalizations is
deemed important, but the identification of individuals remains a
major objective in its own right. The pull is perhaps equally
strong in both directions. Anthropology which has static cultures
as its subject-matter is a descriptive science.
B I owe this important distinction to the instructive paper of J. J. C.
Smart, "The River of Time,")Mind, Vol. LVIII (1949), pp. 483-494.
The historian, however, deals with the dynamic aspects of a de-

veloping culture; he deals with events. Shall we say that events
are things and conditions sent down the road of time? We know
well that it is the other way: things and conditions are arrested
events. The structural elements into which the dynamic features
of history are decomposable are derivative, fictitious, empty. His-
tory is killed when dissected. This does not preclude that we can
learn something from the corpse. In fact, the recognition of certain
regularities and repeatable features is indispensable if we want to
confer about history in a language whose terms, of necessity, tend
to stabilize states of affairs.
In order to see more clearly how the "descriptive method"
works in history let us turn to an example. We are told about
Caesar and his story. This historical phenomenon may be consid-
ered as the only known instance of the "Caesar-cases." We can
describe the "Caesar-cases" in terms of what we actually know
about Caesar. We can recast this description until we arrive at an
"explanation" which may have the following form: If a person
with an inheritance of such and such abilities is born into a society
of such and such characteristics and raised under such and such
environmental conditions, his case can be subsumed under such and
such general laws of which his life will turn out to be an exemplifi-
cation. This will teach us nothing about the historical Caesar, and
what we learn about the empty class of his duplicates is useless.
But if we drop some of the specifications, if we distill the " Caesar-
type" out of the class of "Caesar-cases," our eyes will be opened
to analogous cases. Both the gains and losses of this typological
approach are too obvious to be mentioned. Whitehead suggests
that we make generalizations and then distrust them. This is what
some great analysts of history, like Dilthey and Toynbee,4 seem to
be doing; they postulate a certain amount of lawfulness and then
try to get away from it. Physicists like to close the system within
which their laws work, and to consider them as final. Historians
never accept the finality of generalizations and leave the door wide
open for novelty, for the unclassifiable. They want to be surprised.
They can not eliminate alt generalizations at a time; this would be
taking the cement out of the building. The pragmatic service
rendered by typological distinctions and analogies can not be
spared. They become a danger only if their heuristic function is
misunderstood and if the historian has never temporarily taken off
the glasses through which he looks at historical facts. Concepts
4 See the controversy on this point between Professor John W. Blyth and
Professor J. F. Butler in The Philosophical Review, Vol. LVIII (1949), pp. 360-
371, and Vol. LIX (1950), pp. 230-236.
HISTORICAL FACTS 89
of things, linlguistic terms, classifications, generalizations, analogies

are all methodical devices, affecting the object which is studied with
their help, in history as, I suppose, in any other field. Illusions
occur if the relation between the methodical device and the object
to which it is applied is not clearly understood.5
It is, however, one thing to concentrate on the historical ap-
plicability of concepts, patterns, analogies, laws, and another thing
to report historical facts. The former is sometimes called his-
toriosophy, the latter is historiography in its original sense.6 In
historiography, things and conditions are referred to but they are
thrown back from the realm of being into the world in which events
happen, and the immobile logic of "S-is-P" sentences becomes in-
adequate. The historian is primarily interested in demonstrating
how events are related to events.
Reports. A historical fact, like "Caesar conquered Gaul," is
related to events which fall within its temporal extension, like the
battle of Bibracte, and to events which began earlier and/or ended
later, like Caesar's political objectives in Rome or the expansion of
the imperium romnanum. Let us call the former subordinate events
and the latter connective events.
Just as a thing is described by its qualities and explained in its
relations, a historical event is specified by its subordinate events
and can be interpreted by connective events. There are certain
analogies beween qualities and subordinate events, and again be-
tween relations and connective events. But this should not be an
excuse for reducing such events to qualities and relations.
Subordinate events are not necessarily historical facts; if seen
in isolation, they may not have historical significance. But they
elucidate the historical fact to which they are related, and, if well
chosen, it will be their main function to identify that fact in its
uniqueness (illustrating, for instance, how Caesar's conquest of
Gaul was a most peculiar way of conquering a country). The re-
lationship of a historical fact to its subordinate events is that of a
whole to its parts. Doubtless the whole has Gestalt quality. We
may wonder whether that quality is an effect brought about by the
perspective of the spectator or whether it is due to determining
factors which give shape to the course of history. If the latter, we
may wonder whether the determining factors can be identified with
human purposes or whether there is more behind them. The ani-
swer to those questions is beyond the scope of this paper.
5 Cf. Edward G. Ballard, " A Note for the Philosophy of History," in
this JOURNAL, Vol. XLVI (1949), pp. 270-275.
6 Cf. Benjamin Wolman, "The Theory of History," in this JOURNAL, VoL
XLVI (1949), pp. 342-351.
We know a historical fact better when we know more about its

subordinate events, but we understand it better when we see it in
relation to connective events of which it is a constitutive element.
If we knew nothing about Caesar and the imperium romanum and
ancient culture but what we read in Caesar's Bellum Gallicum, and
if we asked why Caesar seized the opportunity of conquering Gaul,
we would be asking a good question, and we would be left without
a satisfactory answer. A good question it would be because history
is understood better if we recognize in every historical fact an op-
portunity which has been seen and realized, and if we can give a
credible account of the incentives and circumstances which led to
such realization. Analyses of this kind are among the main ob-
jectives of the historian. He is easily lost in speculations if he at-
tempts to start from causes and to predict effects. There is no hard
and fast rule by which he can tell how economic, psychological, or
any other factors will blend in bringing about a change. Rather
he must take the historical facts as they are given and work back-
ward from effects to causes, from ends to motives, from determinates
to determinants. Yet, as he tries to do this, the variety of possible
incentives and circumstances which might have brought about a
well-known historical fact can be perplexing as long as there are no
criteria beyond the fact itself. There will be no telling a good con-
jecture from a bad one, and no convincing answer. However, the
field of possible conjectures becomes smaller once the historian has
the guidance of connective events. If he can see Caesar's conquest
of Gaul in the light of Caesar's political ambitions in Rome, he is
on firmer ground. Generally speaking, if he can see a historical
fact within a wide setting of properly chosen connective events, the
inner logic of forces which brought it about will become transparent,
and error will be less probable.
It is, however, equally true that the danger of error and gross
distortion becomes greater if the set of connective events is not prop-
erly chosen. Is Roman culture really best understood as a con-
tinuation of Greek culture, or rather of Etruscan culture as,
perhaps, we would be tempted to assume if we knew more about
the latter? Spengler and Toynbee, like most historians, place Greece
and Rome within the same cultural setting, but there is a world of
difference between Spengler 's Magian culture and Toynbee 's Syriac
civilization, as possible settings for Jewish history, for instance, and
it is both amusing and distressing to observe how the same events
allow for different interpretations as they are subordinated to the
one or to the other of those constructs. How, then, can we know
whether or not sets of connective events are properly chosen?
I am inclined to believe that they appear as properly chosen if
HISTORICAL FACTS 91
they help to discover a plausible style in the historical changes

which they claim to cover. In other words, the inner connection of
connective events rests on the same historical configurations which
allow us to recognize a single fact as a historical one. After all,
connective events are historical facts, and when we speak of them
as coming in sets, what we assert is that historical facts are not
found in simple juxtaposition but in hierarchies. Many phi-
losophers have even maintained that there is only one such hierarchy
and that all connective events are ineased in a single event, be it the
explication of an over-all principle or of an ultimate purpose.*
Whether a monism of this kind is embraced or allowance is made
for a plurality of unrelated sets of connective events, I can not help
feeling that the reality of history is grounded on the Gestalt quality
of those patterns to which we automatically subscribe as soon as we
speak of a culture. If I am right in this, the historian dwells on
a sub-level as long as he examines causes and effects in history, just
as if one were to study the problem of man on the biological level
only. The importance of causal relationships is too obvious to
be denied; but in disentangling them the historian must be guided
by a sense of style in order to reach the level on which the fabric
of history (or histories) is woven. Stylistic criteria are indispen-
sable in distinguishing historical from non-historical facts and in
determining the weight and functioln of the former within a set of
related historical facts. At this point it may be objected that
matters of style are largely matters of taste. What, then, about the
reliability of historical knowledge?
Historical knowledge. As we are to inquire into the nature of
historical knowledge, we must keep in mind that historiography in-
volves both the assessment alndthe ascertainment of historical facts.
The assessment is often, and partieularly in the beginning, accom-
plished oii the strength of an intuition, without further analysis.
The ascertainment can not be accomplished without the labors of
painstaking research and penetrating criticism. But errors may
be made in the one as well as in the other, and there can be no
progress without constanit revaluation of the ascertained facts.
Simplifying the matter for argument's sake, we might put it this
way: The ascertainment of historical facts is chiefly concerned with
the series of historical facts which are elementary in that they have
no further historical facts (in the defined sense) among their sub-
ordinate events, and one of the methods used is that of splitting
7 Professor Maurice Mandelbaum, in "A Critique of Philosophies of His-
tory," this JOURNAL, VOl. XLV (1948), pp. 365-378, restricts the term "'phi-
losophy of history " to attempts at establishing such a monism. He thinks
that such attempts are abortive. I can see no reason for this restriction.
such elementary historical facts into subordinate events. The as-

sessment of historical facts is chiefly concerned with the establish-
ment of a hierarchal order among ascertained historical facts, and
one of the methods used is that of defining historical facts whieh
are of a higher order in that they are combinations or configura-
tions of elementary facts. It is the assessment of historical facts
which involves criteria of historical style. The ascertainment of
facts is achieved by methods which are more of the kind generally
considered as empirical or scientific. Indeed, from the standpoint
of an empiricist it would be best if we could dismiss the assessment
of historical facts as unscientific. This would be a naive mistake,
but even if it were not, it could be asked whether the ascertainment
of historical facts results in reliable knowledge.
According to Professor Werkmeister and Professor C. I. Lewis,
knowledge is warranted belief. Professor Lewis adds that it is
warranted through justification and verification. Our belief in his-
torical facts is justifiable if they have been ascertained through
critical evaluation of the sources, but, in most instances, that belief
is not verifiable, in the sense in which Professor Lewis uses this
word, and his theory of terminating judgments finds little applica-
tion in history. Clearly, what he says about our knowledge of the
past, as far as it transcends our own memory, is inadequate.8 He
ends up with this statement:
No theoretically sufficient verification of any past fact can ever he hoped for.
. . .The "equation" of past fact with possible verification, or "translation"
of the one into terms of the other expresses a limit or ideal of empirical knowl-
edge which can never be fully realized.9
Does this guarded statement mean that, at least, we take a number

of steps toward verification of a historical statement although never
with final result? Or that we can not even take the first step? If
the former is what it means (and this seems more likely), historical
facts are not essentially different from any other empirical facts.
But as I see it, in most instances we can not take any direct steps
toward verification at all. Now, from the standpoint of Professor
Lewis it would seem that facts which are not verifiable are inconse-
quential and do not deserve our interest. Indeed, if anybody
wishes to maintain that what is really essential in past fact is inde-
pendent of all possible verification, Professor Lewis asks, "what is
8 See An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, LaSalle, Ill., 1946, pp. 197-
201. See also the criticism by Evelyn Masi, this JOURNAL, VOl. XLVI (1949),
pp. 670-674, and by Israel Scheffler, this JOURNAL, Vol. XLVII (1950), pp.
158-166.
9 Ant Analysis of Knowledge and Valiuation, p. 201.
HISTORICAL FACTS 93
his, or anybody's, interest in knowing it"? 10 My answer to that

question may be seen in the last part of this paper. At this point
it must be said that the theory of knowledge as developed by
pragmatists and related schools takes its main clues from the needs
of the future rather than from past events. Could it be that knowl-
edge has a dimension not yet sufficiently explored by epistemologists
who dominate the American scene? Or do we have to resign to
the fact that we do not know with absolute certainty whether Abra-
ham Lincoln ever lived?
Now, if the skeptic can doubt whether Lincoln ever lived, the
difficulty of knowing for certain that his life left an indelible mark
on American thinking may appear much greater. About this I
wonder, though. If we want to ascertain the fact of Lincoln's life,
we have to overcome, among other obstacles, the egocentric predica-
ment which obstructs the step from the internal to the external;
but if we can bracket this difficulty and take the fact of Lincoln's
existence for granted, the assessment of this fact will take place in
a world which is more intimately our own. We do not feel the
bullet which killed Lincoln, but the changes initiated by that shot
reach the sphere of our immediate experience. Hence, we should
not a priori make the assumption that the assessment of a historical
fact presents incomparably greater difficulty to the epistemologist
than its ascertainment. But it must be added at once that the
theory of values and of their relations to facts has not yet been
developed to the point of permitting us to draw a definite line
between the subjectivity or objectivity of valuations in history.
The Gestalt theory which, perhaps, could serve as an intermediary
between value theory and epistemology has so far failed to revo-
lutionize our current theories of knowledge, and the ontic condi-
tions of historical configurations pose some of the most intricate
problems scientific method can ever dare to approach. Take ques-
tions such as the following: Do we have a right to speak of an
"English philosophy," of a "Western culture"? Does Spain be-
long to the latter? Is there a German culture? Are there possibly
two German cultures, Gothic and Faustian, the one succeeding the
other about 1650? There is no universal agreement on certain
stylistic criteria which doubtless bear on such questions, and all
answers involve a measure of arbitrariness. Yet, the stylistic cri-
teria for the objective evaluation of a painting or a poem are much
better defined now than they were a century ago, and there is no
reason to doubt the possibility of progress in objective historical
valuation.1' In the meantime, let us enjoy the freedom of sub-
10 Ibid., p. 197.
11 Cf. Edtiard Spranger, Probleme der Kulturmorphologie, Berlin, 1936.
jectivity, and let us consummate the significance of historical re-

ports until they become Erlebnisse in Dilthey's sense.
III
I can be very brief on the third question. Why are we inter-
ested in history? The pragmatic value of historical knowledge is
a good justification for the interest in it. The past is studied by
many as a testing ground for methods which may be useful in shap-
ing the future. But historical research is also ardently done by
people who have no stake in politics and who do not do it either
simply for the sake of entertainment or elevation or gratification
to a weird antiquarian interest.
When we read a historical novel, a peculiar quality of our his-
torical interest becomes quite apparent. There is entertainment
and elevation in the novel, but, above all, some of us are curious to
know which of the reported events are historically true and which
are products of poetical imagination. I am inclined to believe that
the following thought is in the back of our minds when we are con-
fronted with an ascertained historical fact: It has really happened;
so it could happen; so this is one of those events which could happen
to members of the human race; so the human race is the group of
beings to whom, in their history, this kind of event could happen.
It is not necessarily implied that it can happen again.
If this analysis is correct, we expect from history the aniswer
to the question: What are we, as human beings? 12 We have been
told that humans are rational animals, that they can laugh and
speak, that they can make tools, that they are endowed with im-
mortal souls, etc. As far as true, such assertions say something im-
portant about us. But if we look deeper, the detachment involved
in laughing and speaking and making tools is only a symptom of a
certain way of entering into situations. Human beings do not
simply adjust themselves to situations, as do animals, but sometimnes,
alter them. He who wants to have full information about the hu-
man race, must know how situations have been changed by human
beings. Of this, history, and nothing but history, gives a precise
account.
WALTER FALES
LiNCOLN UNIVERSITY
12 "'Art and history are the most powerful instruments of our inquiiry into
human nature." Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man, New Haven, 1944, p. 206.

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Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

THE JOURNALOF PHILOSOPHY

Definition: A historical fact is an event which influences the

Among possible objections to the given definition attention may

activity of conquering a country can be clocked; the achievement of

The historian, however, deals with the dynamic aspects of a de-

of things, linlguistic terms, classifications, generalizations, analogies

We know a historical fact better when we know more about its

they help to discover a plausible style in the historical changes

such elementary historical facts into subordinate events. The as-

Does this guarded statement mean that, at least, we take a number

his, or anybody's, interest in knowing it"? 10 My answer to that

jectivity, and let us consummate the significance of historical re-

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