Some Methodological Issues

When dealing with the history of thought, in any discipline, there is a tendency to force the actual sequence of events into preconceived theoretical structures either explicitly or, more often, implicitly. That is to say we rationalise a process of evolution which may be, at times, essentially intuitive or even irrational.1 The process of putting one’s thoughts together, consciously or unconsciously, involves the acceptance or rejection of certain frames of reference. It may be that we normally think or write in a clear, but implicit, framework or orthodoxy. To imagine a problem, is to have already accepted the context. This is the sense of Kuhn’s normal science or of work within Lakatos’s research programmes. Although the framework is potentially questioned with every thought, word or argument, this may not be of primary importance to the historian of thought. However, when the context or tradition begins to be explicitly reconsidered, or inconsistent ideas are maintained, then we must conclude that the orthodoxy itself is under question. In these conditions the writer is, more or less consciously, selecting, creating his precursors.2 The retention or rejection of a phrase becomes crucially important. So too may be the precursors, or even the successors, not because ‘it has all been done before’ but because there may be an implied similarity of goals or modes of thought.