cause of CDM and impact of history
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study of cause and effect - which requires a strong grasp of historical chronology - constitutes one of the basic approaches to the discipline of history. The underlying principle is one adapted from physics: for every action there is an equivalent reaction; every cause results in an effect. In historical terms, every event has a cause, and is itself the cause of subsequent events, which may therefore be considered its effect(s), or consequences. For various reasons, three of which are listed below, this view of history has become less popular in recent times. However, thinking in terms of cause and effect remains a valuable skill you should master.
Some of the problems with the cause and effect approach to history include:
its risk of reducing complex historical issues to overly simplistic explanations. For example, "in 1914, Austrian Crown Prince Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb ['the cause']. In retaliation, Austria declared war on Serbia, launching the sequence of events that culminated in World War I ['the effect']." In fact, both the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and even Austria's declaration of war against Serbia are but two relatively minor variables within the far larger set of complex issues that contributed to the many causes of World War I. While Franz Ferdinand's assassination may have been the immediate catalyst of the war, it was certainly not the cause.
its implicit reliance on the negative logic-argument. Part of the way in which physicists (and some philosophers, too) have applied the cause-and-effect model to their subject matter is by way of negative logic. Not only did A cause B, but (here's the negative logic) B would not have happened, had it not been for A. In history, however, things do not work out as neatly. Take the above World War I example. Following the negative logic argument, if Franz Ferdinand hadn't been assassinated (the catalyst for World War I, remember?), the war itself would never have begun. This claim is highly doubtful: most historians agree that the rivalry between the major European empires, the power blocs that had been established among them, and the complex set of alliances that existed within each bloc had made war all but inevitable long before 1914. In fact, if Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated, and even if Austria had not declared war on Serbia, a major military confrontation inv
Some of the problems with the cause and effect approach to history include:
its risk of reducing complex historical issues to overly simplistic explanations. For example, "in 1914, Austrian Crown Prince Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb ['the cause']. In retaliation, Austria declared war on Serbia, launching the sequence of events that culminated in World War I ['the effect']." In fact, both the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and even Austria's declaration of war against Serbia are but two relatively minor variables within the far larger set of complex issues that contributed to the many causes of World War I. While Franz Ferdinand's assassination may have been the immediate catalyst of the war, it was certainly not the cause.
its implicit reliance on the negative logic-argument. Part of the way in which physicists (and some philosophers, too) have applied the cause-and-effect model to their subject matter is by way of negative logic. Not only did A cause B, but (here's the negative logic) B would not have happened, had it not been for A. In history, however, things do not work out as neatly. Take the above World War I example. Following the negative logic argument, if Franz Ferdinand hadn't been assassinated (the catalyst for World War I, remember?), the war itself would never have begun. This claim is highly doubtful: most historians agree that the rivalry between the major European empires, the power blocs that had been established among them, and the complex set of alliances that existed within each bloc had made war all but inevitable long before 1914. In fact, if Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated, and even if Austria had not declared war on Serbia, a major military confrontation inv
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