The Idea of History Quotes

“Thus natural science is not a way of knowing the real world; its value lies not in its truth but in its utility; by scientific thought we do not know nature, we dismember it in order to master it.”
― R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History

“Every new generation must rewrite history in its own way; every new historian, not content with giving new answers to old questions, must revise the questions themselves.”
― R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History

“For Hellenistic thought, self-consciousness is no longer, as it was for Hellenic thought, a power to conquer the world; it is a citadel providing a safe retreat from a world both hostile and intractable.”
― R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History

“That is why all science begins from the knowledge of our own ignorance:”
― R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History

“When a student is in statu pupillari with respect to any subject whatever, he has to believe that things are settled because the textbooks and his teachers regard them as settled. When he emerges from that state and goes on studying the subject for himself he finds that nothing is settled. The dogmatism which is an invariable mark of immaturity drops away from him. He looks at so-called facts with a new eye. He says to himself: ‘My teacher and textbooks told me that such and such was true; but is it true? What reasons had they for thinking it true, and were these reasons adequate?”
― R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History

“History is the way in which we conceive the world sub specie praeteritorum: its differentia is the attempt to organize the whole world of experience in the shape of past events. Science is the way in which we conceive the world sub specie quantitatis: its differentia is the attempt to organize the world of experience as a system of measurements. Such attempts differ radically from that of philosophy, for in philosophy there is no such primary and inviolable postulate. If we ask for a parallel formula applying to philosophy and inquire: ‘In terms of what, then, does philosophy seek to conceive the world of experience?’ there is no answer to the question. Philosophy is the attempt to conceive reality not in any particular way, but just to conceive it.”
― R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History

“The historian (and for that matter the philosopher) is not God, looking at the world from above and outside. He is a man, and a man of his own time and place. He looks at the past from the point of view of the present: he looks at other countries and civilizations from the point of view of his own. This point of view is valid only for him and people situated like him, but for him it is valid. He must stand firm in it, because it is the only one accessible to him, and unless he has a point of view he can see nothing at all.”
― R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History

“It is to the Romans, acting as always under the tuition of the Hellenistic mind, that we owe the conception of a history both oecumenical and national, a history in which the hero of the story is the continuing and corporate spirit of a people and in which the plot of the story is the unification of the world under that people’s leadership.”
― R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History