ABSTRACT
If history is to be more than narrative, then it has to explain. Even as narrative, the historian's selection and ordering of events and attitudes, of successful and unsuccessful actions, of speech and writings can be meaningful only if he observes a set of principles by which he selects and orders. If history, in short, is to be something other, and more, than news, then it is a search for explanation. Historical explanation is a process of simplification, by which a great many diverse things are shown to be connected or similar. This purpose demands that events are shown to be causally connected and, moreover, that the causal principles themselves are ordered according to some hierarchic system. It is in this sense that Collingwood regarded history as a science.
