Dray, W on Explaining How-Possibly

8/13/2019 Dray, W on Explaining How-Possibly

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Hegeler Institute

ON EXPLAINING HOW-POSSIBLYAuthor(s): W. H. DraySource: The Monist, Vol. 52, No. 3, Philosophic Problems of Social Science (JULY, 1968), pp.390-407Published by: Hegeler InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27902091.

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ON EXPLAINING HOW-POSSIBLYSome years ago, in the course of a general critique of what hassometimes been referred to as the covering law (or Popper-Hempel)

theory of explanation, I made the claim that perfectly satisfactoryexplanations can often be provided by indicating only one or a fewnecessary conditions, where we remain ignorant of the sufficientconditions, of what we nevertheless claim to understand. Whatseemed tome one identifiable type of such explanations I calledexplaining how-possibly, because it was a type more naturally

given in response to the question how it could be that a certainthing happened than to themore familiar question why it did so.1In the present paper I propose to review certain objections to thisthesiswhich have come tomy attention in the interval, and tomakesuch concessions as these seem to require.2 In fact, the concessionswill be minor, since the general thesis still seems to me quitedefensible.The original statement of the thesis was phrased in terms of arather frivolous example taken from a popular magazine. Since thecriticisms I wish to consider have generally been put in terms ofthe same example, itmay be useful to restate it before brieflysummarizing my noncovering law analysis of it.The example goeslike this:

An announcer broadcasting a baseball game from Victoria, B.C.,said: It's a long flyball to centre field, and it's going to hit highup on the fence. The centre-fielder's back, he's under it, he's caughtit, and the batter is out. Listeners who knew the fence was twentyfeethigh couldn't figure out how the fielder caught the ball. Spectators could have given them the unlikely explanation. At the rear

i Laws and Explanation inHistory (Oxford, 1957) ,Chap. 6.21 regret that F. D. Newman's Explanation by Description (The Hague, 1968)came into my hands too late for me to take his very interesting criticisms intoaccount in this paper.

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ON EXPLAINING HOW-POSSIBLY 391of centre fieldwas a high platform for the scorekeeper.The centrefielder ran up the ladder and caught the ball twentyfeet above theground.Now it seems tome thatwhat ishere called an explanation is a

perfectly good one, in the context suggested by the anecdote. Therevelation of certain previously unknown facts-that there was aladder, attached to a platform, and that the fielder used it-isexactly

what those listeners who wanted an explanation needed toknow. But what made these particular facts explanatory? Not, 1should argue, their constituting sufficient conditions for the event tobe explained, the catch-and hence, still less their being seen to fallunder generalizations or laws which would justify the claim thatthey were sufficient conditions. It is not even that they are seen tocomplete a sufficient set of conditions, for the explanation is quiteacceptable even if such a set remains unknown. What makes thecited facts explanatory seems rather to be that they successfullyrebut a presumption, shared by listeners, and reasonable enough inthe light of their knowledge at the time, that the fielder could nothave caught the ball. The presumption is that in spite of theannouncement that the ball was caught, this just couldn't havehappened. The explanation consists in showing that, in spite ofappearances to the contrary, the event was not impossible afterall.

An explanation of this sort, it should be noted, makes noattempt to show why the ball was caught. What needs to be shownis how the fielder managed to catch it-how it could be that hecaught it. And it iswith reference specifically to this how-possiblyquestion, I should argue, and not to themore common why-necessarily one, that the explanatory status of the facts cited is to bejudged. Thus nothing more is required to make 'There was aladder, etc.* a completely satisfactory explanation of the propertype than what is needed to rebut the presumption of impossibility.Since this can be achieved by citing merely necessary conditions ofthe catch, it seems proper to represent the case as exemplifying aclass of exceptions to the standard covering law account of explanation. This class, furthermore, is to be distinguished, not only fromcases which satisfy that theory in its deductive version, but also fromthose which covering law theorists analyze in terms of inductive



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392 THE MONISTprobilification. Explanations how-possibly are no more to be assimilated tohow-probablies than towhy-necessarilies.Itmay be worth calling attention explicitly to some differencesbetween the position which has just been sketched and certain otherways of arguing for the viability of explanations citing only necessary conditions. It is often claimed, for example, that what satisfiesus, in practice, is generally incomplete explanation-this beingregarded as justifiable provided we have reason to believe that theconditions we cite in fact belong to a sufficient set,which a demandfor the completion of our explanation would require us to specify.3The way I have represented the aim of explaining how-possibly,however, makes knowledge of such sufficient conditions irrelevant tothe question asked. The present thesis is to be distinguished alsofrom the claim that, in the special case of explaining voluntaryhuman actions at least, necessary conditions-notably those whichprovided the agent with reasons to act as he did-are all ourexplanations can hope to set forth,'since it is to be assumed that nosufficient conditions for such actions exist.4 This is a position quitelike one which I have argued for elsewhere myself; but it is herequite beside the point. Somewhat closer to that point, perhaps, is aview of distinctively genetic explanations as an attempt to showhow a number ofmerely necessary conditions of a certain development or process were successively satisfied over a period of time,yielding a series of but-for-this-not-that's.5 Such accounts, however,seldom offer any theoretical justification of the claim that necessaryconditions by themselves are capable of performing the explanatoryfunction. There is nothing in them analogous to the presumptionrebuttal pattern of explaining how-possibly.

3 See, for example, Carl Hempel's account of explanation sketches in TheFunction of General Laws inHistory, reprinted in P. Gardiner (ed.), Theories ofHistory (Glencoe, 1959),pp. 350ff.* See, for example, the account of 'interpersonal transactions' inH. A. Hart andA. M. Honor ,Causation in the Law (Oxford, 1959), pp. 48-54.s See W. B. Gallie, Explanation inHistory and the Genetic Sciences, in PatrickGardiner (ed.), Theories ofHistory, pp. 387ff.



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ON EXPLAINING HOW-POSSIBLY 393IIFurther clarification and elaboration of my general claim mayconveniently be left to emerge frommy review of criticism. Let meturn first to some objections which have been raised by P. F.Strawson, P. H. Nowell-Smith and John Passmore. According toStrawson, what I have said about explaining how-possibly makes apretty neutral point as between covering law theorists and their

opponents. For thus to counter a prior presumption against something's being possible, he saysmight simplybe to show that itwas not, after all, an exception to alaw; and even the most rigorous covering law theorist would probably be willing to qualify his account of explanation sufficiently oadmit this case, without feeling that he had thereby surrenderedany substantialpart ofhis position.6

As Strawson expresses it, however, I cannot see that this is a verydamaging statement, even if true. For although one may certainlyrebut a presumption of impossibility by an attribution of necessity,one surely need not claim that to do something short of this-namely, to show only possibility-would fail to rebut the presumption.We might, in this connection, speak of strong and weak rebuttals,the former,which Strawson appears to favour, going further than isactually required, but certainly also counting as an explanation, anacceptable answer to the original question. It may be, of course,that I have misconstrued Strawson's point in saying this; itmay bethat by showing that what happened was not an exception to a law,he simply means showing that we can still accept the originallaw-the one that apparently ruled out the case. In the baseballexample, thismight be something like 'Fielders don't catch ballstwenty feet above their heads'. But in that case Strawson reallyagrees with me. For to show thatwhat happens is not an exceptionto that law is not necessarily to show that it falls under some otherlaw. The point at issue, of course, is not whether explaining howpossibly must repudiate the applicability of all laws. It is ratherwhether it commits us to the truth of some law or laws whichrenders what happened either necessary or highly probable.

.Review,Mind (April,1959),268.



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394 THE MONISTProfessor Nowell-Smith begins by agreeing that explanations areoften concerned to show that something which, in view of thereader's natural expectations, might seem impossible, nevertheless

managed to occur. But he objects to my concluding that suchexplanations constitute a separate type. For what is done here, hesays

is topermit the reader to bring to bear on the situation one of thetypesof explanation with which he is already equipped. In thiscase,it is explained that (surprisingly) the ball was in fact only a footabove the player's head, not twenty feet; so he can bring to bear thegeneralization that expert players catch balls one foot above theirheads, a generalization that he formerlythought inapplicable.7

Here there is not doubt what the criticmeans. As I was tempted toinfer in the case of Strawson, also, what is being claimed is that thecogency of a how-possibly explanation depends upon the truth ofat least an implicit law which would represent what is explained asnecessary; and Professor Nowell-Smith makes quite explicit what, inthe present case, he takes that law to be. Itmight be noted that heknows enough of the game of baseball not to hold that such anobviously satisfactory explanation could depend logically upon suchan obviously unsatisfactory generalization as 'Players always catchballs one foot above their heads'. He therefore prudently modifiesthe more obvious generalization to read expert players. Even ifthis renders the generalization true, however (without, let us assume, making it analytic), Nowell-Smith's insertion is pointless. Forwe do not require toknow in the case envisaged that the fielder wasexpert in any such inflated sense.We only need to know that thecatch was within his competence. And it need surely not be conceded that people always, or even usually, perform at the level oftheir competences.Like Strawson and Nowell-Smith, Professor Passmore begins byallowing that demands for explanation often arise in the way setout by the baseball example: something seems to have happenedthat cuts right across our expectations, he says.Having been toldabout the catch, there is a discrepancy in our experience. Never

7Review,Philosophy (April,1959), 172.



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396 THE MONISTa little tempted by thismove. The explanation he was standing ona high platform/' he allows, does not indicate a sufficientconditionof ball-catching (he adds in general, but this is irrelevant, and ispresumably a slip). But it does state a sufficientcondition forwhatis puzzling us-how it ispossible forhim to catch the ball. 9Now to say that since the explanation only offers a sufficientcondition of the possibility of the catch, it therefore only explainsthe possibility of the catch, in fact accords very well with what themost extreme deductivists among covering law theorists have alwayssaid. Against accepting such a view, I urge two considerations. Thefirst,which will perhaps have a rather limited appeal, is the simpleobservation that deductivists here do not explicate an existingnotion of explanation, but stipulate one. For there is nothing at allodd about asking How do you explain the catch in the light of ...and getting the reply There was a platform and a ladder, and . . .But if covering law theorists are not moved by this first consideration, I think they should at least be a little uneasy about thesecond. For the argument used to deny that the alleged how-possibly explanation explains the catch can surely be turned againstall those inductive versions of the covering law model which Hempel himself has been the first to elaborate. Ifwe can explain onlywhat we can strictly deduce, then any so-called inductive explanation of a given occurrence will turn out not to be an explanation ofit either, but (atmost) of itsprobability. Professor May Brodbeck isthe only covering law theorist, tomy knowledge, who iswilling toswallow this-or, at any rate, something very like it. Refusing togive up the principle thatwe can only explain what we can deduce,and admitting thatmost of our general knowledge-including thatfound inmost sciences-is statistical, the courage of her convictionsdrives her to the conclusion that we can hardly ever (and perhapsnever) explain individual occurrences.10 The outlook for explanation in applied sciences, history or the law on such a theory ishardly promising.

9 Ibid., p. 273.10 Explanation, Prediction and 'Imperfect' Knowledge, in H. Feigl and G.Maxwell, eds., Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 3 (Minneapolis, 1962),pp. 248ff.



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ON EXPLAINING HOW-POSSIBLY 397III

But Passmore does not finally rest his case on the considerationsadduced so far.He goes on in fact to elaborate an argument which,holding firmly to the assumption that it is the catch that is to beexplained, reaches the conclusion that how-possibly explanations,under pressure, must dissolve into why-necessarily ones. The reallyserious question, he says, is whether reference to anything short ofa sufficientcondition, no matter how important itmay be, can be asatisfactory explanation.11 It is true,he allows, thatwe seldom knowwhat the fully sufficient conditions of an actual occurrence are; butwe must be confident all the same that what we refer to wassufficient in that particular case-by which I take him to mean,sufficient in conjunction with other unspecified conditions which Iam confident were satisfied in the case. In the face of a certain kindof challenge, Passmore continues, we might well feel obliged tomake such conditions explicit. If so, it turns out that to answer a'how-possibly* question, unless with a mere guess, is to sketch in a'why-necessarily' explanation.Now fromwhat Passmore sayswe should have to do this conclusion does indeed follow.What I question is his claim thatwe havethe kind of obligation he says we have in such cases. His preciseargument begins with the observation: The baseballer might have

dropped the catch; how then can his being on the platform serve asa sufficientexplanation of his catching the ball? The answer surelyis that it can serve in the sense of sufficiently explaining how itcould be that he caught it,or in the sense of explaining his catchingit how-possibly. That he might have dropped the ball counts onlyagainst the claim that the catch has been explained why-necessarily.And the contention that we have to explain why-necessarily inorder completely to explain how-possibly is exactly what remains tobe established. All arguments which merely show that what I havecalled explaining how-possibly fails to rule out the conceivabilityof slips twixt cup and lip are surely irrelevant. To put it anotherway, the need to distinguish between complete and incompletearises within, not beyond, the class of such explanations. Thus, in

ii Op. cit., pp. 272-3.



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398 THE MONISTthe circumstances we have been considering, to have said onlyThere was a platform, would have provided an incomplete howpossibly explanation, because it only partially rebuts the presumption of impossibility which raised the demand for explanation. Fora complete rebuttal we need reference also to the ladder. Suchcompletion, however, does not turn a how-possibly answer into awhy-necessarily one.In the course of Passmore's argument to the contrary, two further issues are raised. The less important arises out of the followingobservation in support of the claim that a how-possibly explanationis incomplete if it does not explain why a thing occurred. Passmorewrites:

Just as describing is not explaining, so equally rebutting is not explaining. An explanation, of course, can be a rebuttal-the strongest rejection of necessarily not is necessarily so -but a rebuttalneed not be an explanation.

And this, of course, is right. Rebutting is certainly not explaining,if by that we mean that to rebut an assumption is always andnecessarily to explain something. But-and for exactly the samereason-deducing could be said not to be explaining either. AsProfessor Scriven has remarked in this connection, any statementcan be deduced from a double negative formed from it, but no onewould want to claim that anything is explained by such a manoeuver.12 And itmight plausibly be claimed, too, that in many contexts, deduction frommere empirical generalizations is not explaining either. The same could be said of probilification. Passmoreallows that an explanation may be a rebuttal. And although Ishould rather have put it that an explanation may take the form ofa rebuttal (just as on other occasions and in response to other typesof question, itmay take the form of a deduction of the occurrenceof something), this concession is enough. For the question howexplanations which are rebuttals attain their force takes us back topoints we have already discussed.The other and more important issue is suggested by the following remarks of Passmore's:

12 Truisms as the Grounds for Historical Explanations, in Patrick Gardiner(ed.) ,Theories ofHistory, p. 455.



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ON EXPLAINING HOW-POSSIBLY 399Suppose in the radio-broadcast example, we do not know that thebaseballer ran up a tower, and we do not know, even, that there wasa tower on the field. Then he ran up a tower might occur to usas a hypothesis; but it would be a satisfactoryexplanation only ifwe are convinced that, in the circumstances, there was no otherway inwhich he could have caught theball.

He continues:No doubt it is only too often the case that [we] can producenothing better than a set of conceivable explanations- how-possibly answers-with no real way of choosing between them, but thisis certainlynot a situation [we find] satisfactory.13Now the first thing to be said about this is that, on the face of itat least, Passmore seems to be confusing giving how-possibly explanations with giving possible explanations. And there is perhapssome excuse for this in the loose treatment the expression 'showinghow something could have happened' tends to receive in the discussion. If to explain how-possibly were, as Passmore puts it, to offersimply a set of conceivable explanations -how-possibly answers-with no real way of choosing between them, then it is plausibleindeed to say that such explanation requires completion of somekind. It would be my argument, however, that unless we choose to

change our question to a why-necessarily one (and, in practice, thiscommonly happens) the completion need involve only the elimination of incorrect how-possibly explanations. There can be possibleexplanations how-possibly as well as possible explanations whynecessarily.

But what Passmore says here, taken in conjunction with hisprevious argument suggests a further claim, which has been urgedby other critics as well. This is that when we actually come tochoose between alternative how-possibly explanations, we shall findthat the only good reason we can give for preferring the one weselect is its being convertible into an explanation why-necessarily.The illustration Passmore offers does not in fact give very forcefulsupport to this claim. In the case of the baseball catch, he suggests,it would be a possible explanation how-possibly of what happened

i3 Op. cit., p. 273.



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400 THE MONISTthat the fielder used a helicopter to close the gap between himselfand the ball. But the need to choose between this and the storyabout the platform and ladder surely puts us under no obligationto expand the latter into an explanation why-necessarily. We choosethe one we do because we have reason for believing in the truth ofits component statements; we exclude themerely possible explanation in such a case by falsifying the claim that therewas a helicopteravailable.

However, as has been pointed out tome by Mr. Paul McEvoy,the choice between possible explanations how-possibly may notalways be such a simple matter. Suppose that, upon investigation,we find that there was a helicopter on the field at that point-or,shall we say a trampoline, tomake the alternative a little moreplausible. We now have two explanations how-possibly, both ofwhich, besides meeting the formal criterion of rebutting the presumption of impossibility which raised the demand for explanationin the first place, set forth conditions which actually did obtain.

How do we choose between them? Presumably by asking the furtherquestion: Which means did the fielder actually employ in catchingthe ball?-our answer to which, Mr. McEvoy suggests, is reallybetter referred to as an explanation 'how-actually* the fieldercaught the ball, than how-possibly he did it. Unless we are prepared to go all theway to asking how-actually, itmust be admitted,we shall be in danger of offering as the explanation of the catchsomething which, as we might say, had nothing at all to do withit-or, as some objectors have preferred to put it, something whichwas irrelevant to its causal explanation.

It still does not follow, however, that what we do select asrelevant niust itself explain the catch why-necessarily, or that inregarding only one set of conditions as causally relevant we claim toknow what the full causal explanation itself is.No knowledge of thesufficient conditions of the catch is needed to rule unused helicopters or trampolines out of itshow-possibly explanation. What we doabout Mr. McEvoy's terminological recommendation is a matter ofno great importance. He would prefer to call an explanation byreference to something which was either not used or not there anexplanation how-possibly, and an explanation by reference tosomething which was in fact used an explanation how-actually



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ON EXPLAINING HOW-POSSIBLY 401(although still not why-necessarily). I prefer to mark the samedistinction by speaking of possible explanations how-possibly, andactual explanations how-possibly, reserving the term how-actuallyfor a kind of explanation going farbeyond the rebuttal of presumptions of impossibility.

IVLet me turn now to some criticisms offered by Jack Pitt. Pitt,like Passmore, denies that how-possibly explanations can ultimatelybe separated on any clear and acceptable principle from explanations why. He begins by agreeing that the event to be explained

may be described as 'the centre-fielder caught the bair. Thequestion, he says, is whether the explanation can consist solely ofstatements describing (a) the centre-fielder's activity immediatelyprior to his catching the ball, (b) the physical conditions (theladder and the platform) which make his activity possible. It isPitt's own view that the relevance of such considerations can beestablished only by an appeal to an implicitly assumed generalization. His own candidate, which he describes as a 'tendency law',is People with considerable experience in catching fly-balls will,when having placed themselves in a certain proximity to a fly-ball,usually catch it. 14Now against this,my argument would, of course, be that noaccount is taken by Pitt of the presumption-rebuttal pattern of theexplanation. If the problem expressed by That's impossiblearises, as it seems to, out of our thinking the fielder lacked themeans of catching the ball, it is just not necessary, in order toremove precisely this difficulty, thatwe show that, given themeans,we could conclude, in accordance with a tendency law, that the ballwould certainly, or very probably, be caught. Since we know thatthe ball was caught, the explanation would be just as good, of itstype, if the strongest law we could justifiably assert were Fieldersoccasionally, when within two feet of a fly ball, catch it. In fact,even Fielders do it once a season would be enough. If it is

i* Generalizations in Historical Explanation, Journal of Philosophy (June 18,1959), 581-2.



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402 THE MONISTobjected that, were fielders to make catches only once a season,there would still be much to explain about this particular catchwhich the how-possibly explanation, as originally envisaged, ignores, the point may be conceded. For we can always ask forsomething further to be explained, or for the same thing to beexplained in some furtherway. My contention is that explanationsare complete when they resolve the specific problem which gave riseto them-not all the kinds we are able to muster in a givensituation. In the baseball situation, the kind being resolved isarticulated by a how-possibly question.Pitt attempts to drive home his point, however, with an examplewhich has some independent interest. I shall quote it here in full:

Imagine a chemist saying to his layman friend that a certain solution is alkaline. He offers to illustrate thisby showing that it turnsred litmus paper blue, and goes into the next room to secure somelitmus paper. Meanwhile his friendpours nitric acid into the solution. The chemist returns, tries the litmus test, and is flabbergastedthat it does not work. Well, says the friend, when you were outI did pour in some of this other solution you have here. Now inkeeping with Dray's analysis, the explanation would consist solelyof the statement, Nitric acid was added to the test solution. Thepoint need hardly be labored, however, that this statement is relevant only if a variety of generalizations are assumed, in particularcertain laws of chemistry. It is significant to add thatwhile the layman's remark is enlightening to the chemist who knows the laws, itspoint can be seen by the layman only after the chemist indicatesthat there are such laws.15Now Pitt's point here appears to be that the chemist couldscarcely claim to know how it could be that the litmus paperremained red, without discovering that the solution was not, afterall, alkaline. And from this latter knowledge, plus his knowledgethat nonalkaline liquids do not turn litmus paper blue (ormore

sophisticated and detailed laws which would perform the samefunction) he is able to deduce what happened, and hence to resolvethe difficuty.What Pitt seems to be saying is that when we leavethose vague examples of explanation we may draw from ordinary

is Ibid., pp. 582-3.



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ON EXPLAINING HOW-POSSIBLY 403life and examine precise ones drawn from reputable, systematicsciences, we shall see-as Passmore had claimed-that theweak andstrong rebuttals of the presupposition of impossibility cannot beseparated.

Perhaps for some contexts Pitt's point is well taken. For in afield of enquiry like chemistry, where precise laws and deductiveexplanations are readily available, itmay be difficult to imaginecircumstances in which an occurrence would seriously be represented as merely possible. I may therefore have been rash in seeming to claim that irreducible how-possibly explanations can beoffered and found acceptable with respect to any type of subjectmatter whatever. Yet in any investigation of natural events inwhich it is allowed that we can sometimes have knowledge ofnecessary, without knowledge of sufficient, conditions-knowledgeperhaps expressed in generalizations of the form 'Only if x theny'-the claim thatwe can give how-possibly explanations which fallshort of why-necessarily ones would surely hold. For how-possiblyquestions might arise out of our belief that, in a situation in whichwe do not know the sufficient conditions of what happened, acertain condition known to be necessary, at least, is not satisfied.And an explanation how-possibly could be given if this necessarycondition was discovered to obtain after all. It is true that, inconducting such an investigation, we might believe that sufficientconditions were in fact satisfied. And this belief would not beextraordinary: after all, the thing happened. Yet our explanationrequires no knowledge of what those conditions were. And theexplanation would retain its force for a person who believed ratherthat no sufficient conditions were satisfied, i.e. for one who took anindeterministic view of the subject-matter.I would thus challenge the implication that what makes howpossibly explanations sometimes appear viable, outside certainlaboratory situations, is simply our vagueness or imprecision. And Iwould suggest that the limitation upon explaining how-possibly, ifany, to which Pitt's example calls attention, is really just a consequence of the difficulty, in some contexts, of claiming a legitimateemployment for the concept of sheer physical possibility. It is significant, in this connection, to observe that when lawyers, historians,moralists or businessmen ask the question How could that be so? ,



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404 THE MONISTit is seldom physical possibility, whether vaguely or precisely conceived, that is at issue. Their concern-as in the baseball exampleis farmore likely to be whether a certain agent had the opportunityof doing what he was alleged to do, or whether itwas really withinhis powers-what has sometimes been referred to as 'technical possibility\ To show possibility in either of these two senses clearlyneed not involve us in showing physical necessity. Nor need it raisethe question why the agent did what he did at all.If a distinction is allowed between the necessity of an actiondone for good reason, and that of physical occurrence falling underlaw, there is still a further sense-and a common one-in whichhow-possibly explanations may be required to show possibility. Anexample from everyday lifewould be How could he have taken therest of the day off,with all thiswork still to be done? -which couldbe answered completely and satisfactorily by He didn't know therewould be another mail delivery today, so he thought itwas all rightto go early. Explanations of actions by reference to reasons can be,and often are, of the sortwhich might be said to show the rationalnecessity of a certain line of conduct. We say Why did he haveto? , and expect an answer showing there was one and only onereasonable thing to have done. But, in reply to a how-possiblyquestion, such explanations can often also be given, and be completely given, by showing thatwhat was done was rationally permissible, in spite of a presumption to the contrary.

VIn my original discussion of how-possibly explanation, I arguedthat itwas of particular interest to philosophers of history; and Iconnected itwith the characteristic historical way of responding to a

request for explanation-with a narrative. Some critics who haveagreed that this form of explanation constitutes a logically distincttype, have nevertheless expressed doubt as to whether it throwsmuch light on historians' practice. Alan Donagan, for example,invitesme to agree thatmost historical explanations, and themostimportant of them, explain why things happened, and points outthat the Hempelian theory of these is undamaged by the accep



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ON EXPLAINING HOW-POSSIBLY 405tance of a further, how-possibly model.18 J.W. N. Watkins hasvoiced a similar objection. The account given of explaining howpossibly, he agrees, is plausible when one considers the explanation of bizarre, exotic and remarkable events -and he points outthat the baseball example dealt with such a one. But historians, hecontinues, are not continuously in a how on earth? state ofamazement. Most of their work consists of explaining unsurprisingevents ; and in these more usual cases, an explanation whichmerely showed that it was not impossible would not satisfy [our]curiosity at all. 17Now these critics are obviously correct to insist that how-possibly explanations are not the only-or, for that matter, themostcommon-kind found in historical writing. Donagan is justified,too, in suggesting further that theHempelian theorywas not deliberately intended to elucidate the structure of explanations given inanswer to other than 'why* questions. I would still want to claim,however, that how-possibly explanations do have a considerable, ifnot major, place in the explanatory activities of historians. Andalthough Imay formerly have exaggerated it, I should stillwant torepresent their analysis as throwing special light on that characteristic explanatory activity of historians-the construction of narratives.

First letme offer a historical example which suggests the functioning of the how-possibly pattern. Having observed that HenryVIII has been called a coward and a tyrant,A. F. Pollard, in hisFactors inModern History, writes:

There isno objection to calling him all these thingsprovided thatyou make them harmonize with a rational explanation of this coward's or this tyrant's astonishing success. But the more cowardly orthemore tyrannicalyoumake him out tobe, themore difficultyoumake your own and your real task of solving the problem of hisie Explanation in History, reprinted in Patrick Gardiner (ed.), Theories of

History, p. 434n. It might be noted, however, that Hempel himself argues quitedifferently that what is said about how-possibly explanations makes only a'pragmatic' point, and does not identify a distinctive explanatory structure

Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York, 1965) ,pp. 428-30.IT Philosophy of History, in R. Klibansky (ed.), Philosophy inMid-CenturyVol. III, (Florence, 1958), p. 166.



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406 THE MONISTreign, or explaining how itwas thatHenry accomplished somuch,and how itwas thathis work lasted so long. Flabby cowards are not,as a rule, successful revolutionaries, and measures which dependsolely upon the tyranny of one man do not become part of a nation's policy and of a people's conscience.18

This example even mentions explicitly the general considerationit isn't quite a law-which helps generate the demand for explanation: a typical feature of explanations how-possibly. It is virtuallyincredible, the historian implies, that a cowardly tyrant could haveaccomplished Henry's solid work. Something has to give. In this casethe presumption of impossibility arises out of the way Henry'scharacter has traditionally been viewed. Since the historian obviously holds himself somewhat aloof from this accepted view, and hegives us reason to expect that he will show that Henry was not acowardly tyrant after all, Pollard's explanation illustrates very nicely a thesis advanced byW. B. Gallie about historical explanation:that it is usually given at a point in a narrative where the historian,having come across an inconsistency, neglected possibility or ablunder, finds it necessary to re-write a received account.19 As Iargued formerly, however, the expectation of what does not in facthappen is just as often raised by the way the historian's ownaccount develops.This suggests an objection tomy regarding how-possibly explanations as both logically respectable and important in history whichhas on occasion been made to me, not by philosophers, but byhistorians. This is the suspicion that if the presumption which thehistorian's explanation rebuts itself arises out of theway his narrative develops, then the so-called explanation amounts to littlemorethan a game he plays with his reader, perhaps to keep up hisinterest. For unlike the radio announcer of our baseball example,the historian knowingly-even cunningly-arouses the false expectation by the way he describes what occurred. He then, itmay besaid, dramatically reveals its falsity by showing that an event contrary to what was expected occurred-going on to resolve an altogether artificial problem. Perhaps few historians would care to be

is Factors inModern History (Beacon, 1960) ,p. 75.i Philosophy and the istorical Understanding (NewYork, 1964) ,pp. 106ff.



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ON EXPLAINING HOW-POSSIBLY 407rescued from what many of them regard as the restrictions ofHempelian theory at the price of accepting such an account ofexplanatory narrative. The logical description of such story-tellingtricks, itmight be felt, could scarcely, at any rate, contribute anything to the theory of historical enquiry. At most it belongs to thelogic of history as literature.Now I am sure that how-possibly explanation is sometimes usedin thisway and for such purposes; and this can be both irritatingand dishonest. It is not true, however, that the need for suchexplanation only arises when the problem is set up for the ignorantand unsuspecting by a manipulating and more knowledgeable expert. There is a real and important role for explaining how-possiblyin the actual process of historical research, and, as the reference toGallie's work suggests, in the revision of historical theses. Theaccount the historian gives at any one time is always built uppiecemeal out of elements, formany of which he has independentevidence. What he claims to know at any stage of the constructiveprocess-which is, of course, a never-ending one-can always raisethe problem of how one event could have occurred in the light ofsome other occurrences forwhich there is also good evidence. Thedrive for consistency-that direction of enquiry which has ledmanyphilosophers of history to regard 'coherence* as the aim of historicalunderstanding-may be expected at every stage to raise the question 'How could this be, in the light of that?' It could surely beargued, therefore,without implying that it is the only proper modelfor the historian, that the functional significance of explaining howpossibly makes it an especially important kind of explanation inhistorical work. W. H. DRAYTRENT UNIVERSITYPETERBOROUGH, ONTARIO

Dray, W on Explaining How-Possibly

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