[Milton-L] historicism, formalism, etc. (Skulsky)

[James Rovira]

Right or wrong, I contextualized Prof. Fleming's account of "objective"
historical study within accounts of "mechanical" (enlightenment) vs.
"organicist" (romantic) natural philosophy of the 18th and 19th C.  In
Carlyle's view, the mechanical philosophy posits a detached human observer
objectively -- almost from a God's-eye view -- observing their subject.  It
assumes the possibility of complete knowledge of a subject and the autonomy
of human reason, at least about the object of study.  Organicist views of
natural philosophy, on the other hand, emphasize human immanence and the
limitations of human knowledge.  So what sounds like sociability to Prof.
Skulsky sounds to me like organicism.  Each of these views have contributed
in their own way to historiography and hermeneutics.

A mechanical approach to history would assume the historian is above his or
her subject and views it objectively (establishing a binary opposition
between subject and object, historian and historical data), while an
organicist approach to history acknowledges the historian's own position
within, and continuity with, the history he or she studies.

Whatever postmodernists have to say about history and historiography I
understand as a development of the organicist position rather than anything
radically new.

Jim R
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