ABSTRACT
It has been argued that knowledge about society must include a great deal of understanding and valuing. Some people think that it should not include anything else. Benedetto Croce thought that
if we really do make live again in imagination individuals and events, and if we think what is within them … history is already achieved: what more is wanted? There is nothing more to seek … The fact historically thought has no cause and no end outside itself, but only in itself, coincident with its real qualities and with its qualitative reality. 1
R. G. Collingwood made it clearer:… the historian need not and cannot (without ceasing to be an historian) emulate the scientist in searching for the causes or laws of events. For science, the event is discovered by perceiving it, and the further search for its cause is conducted by assigning it to its class and determining the relation between that class and others. For history, the object to be discovered is not the mere event, but the thought expressed in it. To discover that thought is already to understand it. After the historian has ascertained the facts, there is no further process of inquiring into their causes. When he knows what happened, he already knows why it happened. 2
