This book argues that history is a mode of thinking, a form of imaginative reasoning with its own informal logic. In non-technical language and using examples from important works of history, the book defines core elements in historical thinking. These include contingency, complexity, temporality, parts and wholes, consilience, perspectives, analogy, and abduction. These elements are subsumed into the concept of imaginative reasoning. The overall argument echoes the work of hermeneutic philosophers. History is a disciplined imagination, tempered and empowered by its forms of reasoning. It embraces ethical imperatives that the historian has a duty to declare. Equipped with such understanding, historians may answer the many rejections of history and secure its place in our shared futures.
This book argues that history is a mode of thinking, a form of imaginative reasoning with its own informal logic. In non-technical language and using examples from important works of history, the book defines core elements in historical thinking. These include contingency, complexity, temporality, parts and wholes, consilience, perspectives, analogy, and abduction. These elements are subsumed into the concept of imaginative reasoning. The overall argument echoes the work of hermeneutic philosophers. History is a disciplined imagination, tempered and empowered by its forms of reasoning. It embraces ethical imperatives that the historian has a duty to declare. Equipped with such understanding, historians may answer the many rejections of history and secure its place in our shared futures.
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