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8/12/2019 Presentacin de Los Editores

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Editors' Introduction:

Questions

of

Evidence

James

Chandler,

Arnold

I.

Davidson,

and

Harry

Harootunian

The

topic

of evidence is so central for research and

scholarship

that it

is

extraordinary how little direct attention it has received. The best-known

exception

to

this rule of

neglect

is

probably

still

R. G.

Collingwood's

de-

fense of the humanities

in

The

Idea

of

History

(1946),

which

argued

that

only

history,

in

Collingwood's expanded

sense,

could address

enlighten-

ment

aspirations

to

a

science of human

nature. What

distinguished

history

from

science,

on this

account,

was the

operation

of an a

priori

im-

agination

that

governed

the

activity

of

historical

construction;

what

distinguished

historical

imagination

from the artistic

imagination

was its

respect

for

evidence.

Collingwood's

landmark

discussion of Historical

Ev-

idence offered a powerful critique of what he called the scissors-and-

paste

model of

history

and a

compelling

case for the

notion

of the

historian's constitutive

dialogue

with the human

past-a

notion

newly

re-

cuperated

in

the work of

many

recent

theorists.

Question

and evidence are

therefore

correlative

in

the

strong

sense

that facts can

only

become evi-

dence

in

response

to some

particular question.

Yet

despite

its

range

and

acuity,

Collingwood's

discussion of evidence

suffers from

two

related

shortcomings

that

severely qualify

its

continuing

usefulness.

Its

science-history

distinction

is

drawn with a

sharpness

that

seems misleading in the light of the last half-century's work in many fields,

especially

in

the

philosophy

of

science. Hence the

difficulty

Collingwood's

defenders

have had

in

maintaining

his

sharp

distinction

between the

Critical

Inquiry

17

(Summer 1991)

S1991

by

The

University

of

Chicago.

0093-1896/91/1704-0004$01.00.

All

rights

reserved.

738

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740 Editors' Introduction

themselves

the

products

of historical

developments,

and

themselves

un-

dergo

redifferentiation

and

reformulation.

To address such issues, with

funding

from the Centennial Committee

of

the

University

of

Chicago,

we have

invited

a dozen

scholars

in

a

wide va-

riety

of fields to contribute

essays

to

Critical

Inquiry.

These scholars were

selected not

only

on the basis of their

extraordinary, specialized

expertise

but

also because their work has led them

across the

usual

boundaries of dis-

ciplines

to confront

unusual

problems

in

evidence. The

essays

that follow

here

represent

the

first installment. The

authors

of these

essays

have

also

been invited to

a

public

conference

to

be held at

the

University

of

Chicago,

19-22

May

1992,

in

celebration of the

University's

centennial. It is our

hope

that

by encouraging

experts

in diverse fields to

speak

to one another

about these

questions

of

evidence

they

will

also make

their

positions

available

to

a more

general

academic audience.

Further,

by

(as

it

were)

publishing

the

proceedings

in

advance of

the

conference,

we

hope

to

make

the

conference

itself

the

occasion not

of

reading

long

papers

but

of a

special

kind of

discussion,

one

in

which the

audience,

as

disparate

as the

readership

of Critical

Inquiry

itself,

will

be

especially prepared

to

engage

the

matters

under debate.

For

more about the conference

please

contact Lorraine Brochu-

Mudloff,

administrative

assistant,

Chicago

Humanities

Institute,

Joseph

Regenstein Library,

1100 E.

Fifty-ninth

Street,

Chicago,

Illinois,

60637;

telephone:

(312)

702-8274.

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