Exploring Historical Causation
There is a large number of theories about what causes historical events to happen. And without doubt there are in fact many different kinds of causes. It seems to me that the danger lies in espousing any one particular type of cause to the exclusion of all others, for there can be few, if any, events of which it can truly be said that they had but one single cause. It will however be interesting to see whether we can find any common thread running through or underlying some of these theories.
Let me clear one bit of undergrowth before going further. Many of the views and arguments about historical causation bear a strong resemblance to arguments about free will and determinism. It is not possible totally to isolate a discussion of historical causes from this wider question, but it will be helpful if we concentrate our minds on the matter of likely or demonstrable reasons why certain things happened, and as far as we are able, avoid a tendency to collapse the argument back into any views we may hold on determinism. In offering this warning, I am encouraged by E H Carr's comment that arguments about accident in history are not to be confused with arguments about determinism.
What then have historians and philosophers of history thought were the factors in historical causation?
There are the big ideas of history, which we might call Great Causes. The list is long. There is the Will of God; the cyclical nature of history; the iterative Hegelian process by which Man moves progressively towards the ideal state of liberty and self-awareness; similar ideas in Eastern philosophy; the Marxist economic variant of Hegel's ideas; the everlasting law of the Stoics; Adam Smith's "invisible hand"; blind Darwinian evolution; Montesquieu's belief that history is the result of geography and climate.
And there is chaos theory; while this is in large measure about endless random happenings, they are nonetheless supposed to be contained within some overall scheme. The flap of a butterfly's wings may result in a hurricane a week later, but according to the theory, that is to be seen as a random event which triggers off something taking place within this wider context.
It is not difficult to ridicule rigid interpretations of Great Causes, and Bertrand Russell memorably did so when he traced the cause of industrialism back by way of Galileo and Copernicus, of the Renaissance, the fall of Constantinople and the migration of the Turks, to the dessication of Central Asia.
Hume’s notion of causation is his regularity theory. Hume explains his regularity theory in two ways: (1) “we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second” (2) “if the first object had not been, the second never had existed.”
11. Smith E, Ritchie J, Summersgill K, Klussmann J, Lee J, Wang D, Haugen T, Turek L. Age, sexual behavior and human papillomavirus infection in oral cavity and oropharyngeal cancers. 2004; 108:766-772.
There are many reasons why certain events occur. Whether it is our ancestors, culture, or underlying factor’s that bring about the event. Therefore, in order to break the cycle that has come about from these factors we must recognize what they are and then seek to control them. This is the only way we will be able to break the cycle or history repeating itself. Otherwise we may be like the Grecian and Roman Empire’s that fell because they were unable to change their ways.
In philosophy today, free will is defined as, “the power of human beings to choose certain actions, uninfluenced by pressure of any sort, when a number of other options are simultaneously possible.” Philosophers have debated the issue of whether humans truly possess free will since ancient times. Some argue that humans act freely, while others believe that, “Every event, including our choices and decisions, is determined by previous events and the laws of nature—that is, given the past and the laws of nature, every event could not have been otherwise,” which is an idea known as determinism (Barry, #14). This relationship between free will and determinism continues to puzzle philosophers into the twenty-first century. An example of a piece to the free will puzzle, are the schools of thought of Incompatibilism and Compatibilism. Incompatibilism is defined as,
.... Recent developments in quantum physics, biology and information science have put us in a position where we question the uniqueness of the causal-mechanical model of science. But these developments, even though sciences based on non-causal concepts might dominate in the culture, would not eradicate the causal way people have viewed the world and themselves, but only relegate the concept of cause to the realm of metaphor, a rhetorical way of putting things. The concept of cause then would no longer be a scientific concept, but would still be alive in the culture. What brings a change in the general worldview then? This would be the question I still have to ask.
believing that there is more than one cause. What has been thought as the main
Stroul, B. A., Pires, S. A., Armstrong, M. I., & Meyers, J. C. (1998). The impact of managed care on mental health services for children and their families. Future of Children, 8, 119-133.
Stroul, B. A., Pires, S. A., Armstrong, M. I., & Meyers, J. C. (1998). The impact of managed care on mental health services for children and their families. Future of Children, 8, 119-133.
Healthcare errors occur at an alarmingly high incidence and are the eighth leading cause of death (IOM, 2000; Langdrigan, Parry, Bones, Goldman, and Sharek, 2010). The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has estimated that there are 40,000 incidents of medical errors every day. At least 1.5 million preventable medication errors occur each year in the United States. Nurses, as one of the largest groups of healthcare providers, have new roles and responsibilities to improve patient safety and quality. Nurses can attempt to do this through being educated.
O’Shea, E (1999) Factors contributing to medication errors: a literature review. Journal of Clinical Nursing. 8, 5,496-503.
The human papillomavirus (HPV) is currently the most widely spread sexually transmitted disease in the United States, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are over one hundred different types of HPV known at this time, over forty of which can be sexually transmitted. Nearly all sexually active men and women are exposed at some point in their lives. Lifestyle choices such as risky sexual behavior, smoking and alcohol use increase one’s risk of contracting HPV. Additionally, infection with one type of HPV does not prevent infections with other types.
History is a story told over time. It is a way of recreating the past so it can be studied in the present and re-interpreted for future generations. Since humans are the sole beneficiaries of history, it is important for us to know what the purpose of history is and how historians include their own perspective concerning historical events. The purpose and perspective of history is vital in order for individuals to realise how it would be almost impossible for us to live out our lives effectively if we had no knowledge of the past. Also, in order to gain a sound knowledge of the past, we have to understand the political, social and cultural aspects of the times we are studying.
Today, both teens and adults depend a lot on their cell phones. This is mainly because it has become part of there daily activities. It is very common in today’s world to constantly see a person on their phone anywhere you go. People are seen texting in cars, schools, malls, restaurants and any other place. Since society has began to relay more on there phones, texting, and the internet people are repetitively saying that this is a disadvantage because of the less use of books and the traditional research writing, but this is not necessarily true. This is only one reason that people may see it as a disadvantage but there still a lot of advantages to texting. According to students and instructors at Lane Community College who took a survey about texting, texting affected each student or instructor differently; these participants were asked to answer six different questions giving their opinion (Moriss 2). A large portion of students and instructors who were surveyed did believe that texting had a negative affect on student writing. Many people today relay on spell check to correct spelling errors. This is making it easier to misspell words on our own and relaying on something else to fix it. Even though spell check does correct our spelling errors, it does not help with grammar, which does not improve our writing skills. While texting many times words are shorted and slan...
History is the bridge that connects the past with the present. Without history, we have no future. The past gives value to our present. David C. McCullough stated, “History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are”. I agree with McCullough, history gives us a purpose. History allows us to investigate and interpret the past in order to see how we developed and where we came from. We can get an idea of what has influenced our past and present, and also what will shape our future. We can see what previous generations did and whether or not t...
When most people think about history they remember a boring class they took in school a long time ago, they recall memorizing important dates, taking map tests, and falling asleep while listening to a lecture. The truth is that history really is an important subject to be teaching students. History is more than just some lecture you receive in class, history lets us look back, see the good things and the bad things, it allows us to learn from our mistakes and prevent such mistakes from happening in the future. Things that happened in the past are still changing things that are happening today. History is needed for everyone, from government leaders down to individuals; everyone has learned one thing or another from history at some point in their life.