How History Works: The Reconstitution Of A Human Science

195 Pages·2016·1.076 MB·English

by  Martin L. Davies

How History Works
How History Works assesses the social function of academic knowledge in
the humanities, exemplified by history, and offers a critique of the validity of
historical knowledge. The book focusses on history’s academic, disciplinary
ethos to offer a reconception of the discipline of history, arguing that it is an
existential liability: if critical analysis reveals the sense that history offers to
the world to be illusory, what stops historical scholarship from becoming a
disguise for pessimism or nihilism?
History is routinely invoked in all kinds of cultural, political, economic,
psychological situations to provide a reliable account or justification of what
is happening. Moreover, it addresses a world already receptive to comprehen-
sive historical explanations: since everyone has some knowledge of history,
everyone can be manipulated by it. This book analyses the relationship
between specialized knowledge and everyday experience, taking phenom-
enology (Husserl) and pragmatism (James) as methodological guides. It is
informed by a wide literature sceptical of the sense academic historical exper-
tise produces and of the work history does, represented by thinkers such as
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Valéry, Anders and Cioran.
How History Works discusses how history makes sense of the world
even if what happens is senseless, arguing that behind the smoke-screen of
historical scholarship looms a chaotic world-dynamic indifferent to human
existence. It is valuable reading for anyone interested in historiography and
historical theory.
Martin L. Davies is Emeritus Reader in History at the University of Leicester.
His publications include Identity or History? Marcus Herz and the End of the
Enlightenment (1995), Historics: Why History Dominates Contemporary
Society (Routledge, 2006) and Imprisoned by History: Aspects of Historicized
Life (Routledge, 2010).
Routledge Approaches to History
1 Imprisoned by History 9 The Material of World History
Aspects of Historicized Life Edited by Tina Mai Chen and
Martin L. Davies David S. Churchill
2 Narrative Projections of a Black 10 Modernity, Metatheory, and
British History the Temporal-Spatial Divide
Eva Ulrike Pirker From Mythos to Techne
Michael Kimaid
3 Integrity in Historical Research
Edited by Tony Gibbons and 11 The Struggle for the Long-Term
Emily Sutherland in Transnational Science and
Politics
4 History, Memory, and Forging the Future
State-Sponsored Violence Edited by Jenny Andersson and
Time and Justice Egle˙ Rindzevicˇiuˉtuˉ
Berber Bevernage
12 ‘A New Type of History’
5 Frank Ankersmit’s Lost Fictional Proposals for dealing
Historical Cause with the Past
A Journey from Language to Beverley Southgate
Experience
Peter P. Icke 13 Beyond Memory: Silence and
the Aesthetics of Remembrance
6 Popularizing National Pasts Edited by Alexandre Dessingué
1800 to the Present and Jay Winter
Edited by Stefan Berger, Chris
Lorenz and Billie Melman 14 The Soviet Past in the
Post-Socialist Present
7 The Fiction of History Methodology and Ethics in
Alexander Lyon Macfie Russian, Baltic and Central
European Oral History and
8 The Rise and Propagation of Memory Studies
Historical Professionalism Edited by Melanie Ilic and
Rolf Torstendahl Dalia Leinarte
15 Theoretical Perspectives on 16 How History Works
Historians’ Autobiographies The Reconstitution of a Human
From Documentation to Science
Intervention Martin L. Davies
Jaume Aurell
“Persuasively written and developing a challenging thesis based on the per-
vasiveness of historicised understanding in giving illusory meaning to our
world, this book expresses a thought-experiment that needs to be experi-
enced by all historians willing to reflect on the theoretical nature and social
impact of their discipline.”
Jonathan Gorman, Queen’s University Belfast, UK
“Martin L. Davies’s How History Works is the sharpest barrage of arrows
directed at history in a long time. Davies is especially severe in his treatment
of ‘public history,’ and of ‘normal’ history in its ‘public’ (regime-stabilizing)
function . . . I much admire Davies’s wit, erudition, insouciant style, and, let
it be said, hard work.”
Allan Megill, University of Virginia, USA
How History Works
The reconstitution of a
human science
Martin L. Davies
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Martin L. Davies
The right of Martin L. Davies to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davies, Martin L.
How history works : the reconstitution of a human science / Martin
L. Davies.
pages cm. —(Routledge approaches to history; 16)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. History—Philosophy. 2. History—Social aspects. I. Title.
D16.8.D259 2015
901—dc23
2015016293
ISBN: 978-1-138-93212-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67215-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
For Ras

‘. . . almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness
when they are first produced.’
– Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the
Modern World
‘Das Niveau einer Wissenschaft bestimmt sich daraus,
wie weit sie einer Krisis ihrer Grundbegriffe fähig ist.’
(‘The status of a science is determined by how far it can
withstand a crisis of its basic concepts.’)
– Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit