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Excerpt from my Polybius essay.
Oakeshott (1983: 94) characteristically offers a brilliant analysis of the problem which he calls the ‘dry wall theory’. Keeping in mind Pedach’s and Walbank’s account of historical development, Oakeshott believes that though historical events are not themselves contingent, they are related to one another contingently. When a historian assembles a passage of antecedent events to compose a subsequent, he builds what in the countryside is called a ‘dry wall’:
the stones (that is, the antecedent events) which compose the wall (that is, the subsequent event) are joined and held together, not by mortar, but in terms of their shapes. The wall therefore has no premeditated design; it is what its components, in touching constitute. There is a circumstantial relationship, an evidential contiguity, not in terms of causality, family resemblance, design etc. These circumstantial relationships do not themselves constitute historically significant relationships.
So when a historian employs the language of causality, what he ought to be referring to is this contingent circumstantial relationship. A historical past, composed conceptually of contiguous historical events has no place for extrinsic general terms of relationship – the glue of normality or the cement of general causes’ – neither Polybius’ tyche, Pedach’s intentionality, Walbank’s interpretation of aitiai, nor a Hempelian deductive-nomological conditions are valid analyses for historical explanation. And further, Chance as an exemplar of the purely external, cannot be a genuinely causal relationship and is therefore insignificant. To reiterate: Oakeshott (1983: 83) writes that ‘when a historian invokes a notion of ‘causality’ what he is in fact doing is utilizing a rhetorical expression meaning no more than ‘noteworthy antecedents’ and no ‘law(s)’ are involved . . .
Oakeshott, M. (1983). On history and other essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Press.
manwithoutqualities 