ABSTRACT
Even if Turner and Chamberlain, Hobson and Lenin and the rest had all agreed to explain the same events and had made no mistakes of fact, then their explanations might have differed materially from those just reviewed, but it should still be clear that they would have continued to differ from each other. It should also be clear that their divers purposes – to reform or conserve societies, to condemn or justify past policies, to reinforce theoretical structures – might well have been better served by a stricter regard for truth, but could scarcely have been replaced by it. Even Langer’s detachment could provide only detailed criticism of an explanation shaped still by Hobson’s politics. However desirable as qualities of observation, ‘objectivity’ and its last-ditch rearguard ‘intersubjectivity’ still seem to be unable to organize an explanation or to bring men of different faith to agree about the parts or the shape, the length or breadth or depth or pattern, that an explanation should have.
