Workshop Historical Contingency

Workshop Historical Contingency

17.06.2025

14-17h

S-Zone (University Library Building, Bráfova 3, 701 03 Ostrava)/Zoom

University of Ostrava

On June 17, the Centre for the Philosophy of Historiography will organize the workshop “Historical Contingency”. It consists of two consecutive talks with attendant discussions and will be hybrid in format. If you would like to participate in person or on Zoom, please register with Georg Gangl ([email protected]). (The registration of in-person participants is for catering purposes only.) For a more detailed programme, please see below.

Programme

14.00-15.30: From Cleopatra’s Nose to Darwin’s Nose: J. B. Bury on History, Science and Contingency (Gregory Radick, University of Leeds, UK)

"The nose of Cleopatra: had it been shorter, the face of the entire world would have been changed." Pascal's line, from his Pensées, centuries later went on to furnish the title for a famous 1916 essay by the Cambridge historian John Bagnell Bury (1861-1917) highlighting the role of contingency in history.  What, exactly, was Bury arguing for, in that essay as well as in an earlier companion piece, "Darwinism in History" (1909)?  Why did the theme of contingency in historical science and scientific history come to preoccupy him as it did in these years?   And what, now, should we make of one of his most startling claims in his 1916 essay: that, over the longue durée, contingency has become less important - and that its importance will continue to diminish?  In this talk I'll offer some preliminary answers to these questions as well as more general reflections on Bury's stance on the role of accident in history and its enduring value, especially for historians of science.

15.30-17.00: Historical inevitability (Robert Northcott, Birkbeck University of London, UK)

 “World War One was inevitable.” “The course of human history is always contingent.” What sense can we make of such claims? And so, what evidence could bear on them? I use recent work in philosophy of science to define historical inevitability in terms of causal sensitivity. This implies that it must be understood in a relativized way, and that it is a property of historical explanations rather than of history itself. I explore how historical inevitability, so understood, relates to chance and determinism, how it relates to predictability, and how the concept can be used by historians, social scientists, and others.