Repository | Book | Chapter

The treatment of matter as a dynamic entity and the resulting similar treatment of historical facts results in the acceptance of the principle of causality, which states that every change in nature and society is a result of the working of specified causes.¹ The principle of causality is in turn the basis of the statement on the regular (nomological) character of the world. The latter statement means that there are no facts that would be non-conditioned. In a more radical formulation, that conditioning is linked with the assumption of regularities (statements on such regularities being termed laws — see Chap. XII below), which govern changes in nature and society. A less radical formulation is confined to the acceptance of a causal conditioning. The latter, less radical, statement results in practice (as can be seen in many philosophies of history) in a denial of regularity of facts. The statement that facts are governed by regularities does, however, have a strong substantiation in results of scientific research. What is meant here is that results of research can in fact be interpreted in terms of regularities. This enables us to draw conclusions about regularities governing the subject matter of research, and hence governing historical facts as well. This does not mean, however, that the assumption of regularities in the gnosiological sense means for all researchers the acceptance of all resulting ontological conclusions.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-1123-5_13

Full citation: