Causation in History

Introduction

• All scientific inquiry begins with the question “why?” and this includes history, which also seeks to explain the reasons behind events and phenomena.

• Historians ask questions like why did the Roman Empire decline?, why did World War I occur?, why did the British transfer power to India in 1947?, and why did Gandhi withdraw the Non-cooperation Movement?

• The writing of history starts with these why questions, aiming to explain the occurrence of specific events rather than general trends.

• Unlike other social sciences, history does not focus on generalities but analyzes specific occurrences, such as the British leaving India in 1947, the decimation of the Minoan population, or the socialist revolution in Russia.

• Historians explain the occurrence of specific events, rather than general categories like de-colonization or revolutions.

• History treats an event as a unique particular, not just an instance of a general category, focusing on dimensions specific to that event.

• The goal is to offer a fully detailed explanation of why an event happened when it did, focusing on its unique aspects.

What is Causality?

• Historians analyze events as unique particulars and attempt to explain why they occurred, central to which is the search for causes.

• The explanation of historical events requires determining the cause of the event, which was traditionally believed to be an antecedent event, but is now seen as a condition or set of conditions that are present when the event occurs and absent when it does not.

• A cause is considered both necessary and sufficient for the occurrence of the event.

  • Necessary means the absence of the condition implies the absence of the effect.

  • Sufficient means the presence of the condition results in the effect.

• For example, Vitamin A deficiency causes night-blindness, as its absence results in night-blindness, and its presence prevents it.

• The necessity and sufficiency of the cause must be distinguished: necessity is different from sufficiency, and constant conjunction alone is not enough to establish a causal relationship.

• Cardiac arrest is sufficient for death but not necessary if other conditions like liver failure or hemorrhage could also cause death.

• The cause must be regularly associated with the effect, always present when the effect occurs and absent when the effect does not occur.

• Constant conjunction and spatial contiguity are observable features of a causal relationship, but they alone do not identify the cause.

• Lightning before thunder or songs in a sequence do not imply causality, as other underlying causes may be at work.

• Listing events in a sequence does not explain an event; sequencing events does not provide the why of the event.

• To explain an event, it is necessary to show that the presence of a specific condition resulted in the effect, and its absence would have prevented the event from happening.

• Identifying a cause is not about sequencing events but about locating a necessary condition that made the event occur.