I would argue that explanation in history is much more complicated. Basically, your argument is somehow similar to the rational choice approach in political science, while causal explanation in history must take into account contingency as well as path dependence. Usually, causal explanations in history are more complicated than previously thought. Explaining the behaviour of voters is generally less complicated than explaining events in a distant past.

I would argue that explanation in history is much more complicated. Basically, your argument is somehow similar to the rational choice approach in political science, while causal explanation in history must take into account contingency as well as path dependence. Usually, causal explanations in history are more complicated than previously thought. Explaining the behaviour of voters is generally less complicated than explaining events in a distant past.

This is a deep question. Christina Petrescu may already have answered it for me. There is a parallel in aviation: When pilots are being trained to fly a particular type of aircraft, they are sent to a ground school first, where they learn about the technical details of that particular type: dimensions and capacities, how all parts and components work, singly and together, how failure of one system affects another, what will be available in case of an emergency as well as operational details, loading, performance.

For a complex aircraft, this may consist of two or three weeks in a classroom before they sit exams and, if satisfactory, move on to the simulator.

When British Airways introduced Concorde, only the best were promoted to the type. And the examination also heralded the introduction of "multiple choice" type of questions, rather than "sketch and describe" or, "how much?", or"what?", the sort of questions that would make many candidates chew and swallow the end of their biros.

In order to monitor the procedure, a non-pilot from the operations department sat in on the ground school and also took the test.

To everyone's astonishment - and embarrassment - his results scored highest. Against senior captains, who passed, albeit not with such high marks.

This had to be investigated.

The man who had scored so high was asked how he had been able to achieve higher results than the airline's ace captains.

His response was unexpected:

"When I did not understand the question, I just picked the longest answer".

Is there something in this?

The man was right expecting a long answer to be fitting a complex question.

Perhaps the reverse of Occam's Razor", but the explanation may be based on similar psychology.

I don't know, I am studying history.

I may have selected the longest answer myself.

But then, I was once a commercial pilot myself. (On Fokker F27 and BAC 1-11, not Concorde unfortunately).

Great question, to which the answer is clearly Yes. And No. I'm an ancient historian who works in the humanistic rather than social-scientific stream of history (i.e., focusing on particular events, wars, situations), so please make due allowances. But here's how it seems to me, in five points.

1. The human past, like the human present, is infinitely complex and not reducible to any this or that. We have little idea even why we do what we do: little understanding of the web of influences, motives, and calculations, rational and otherwise. We don't understand the actions of our leading politicians who are on the news every evening. How could we possibly understand what people did in the Roman Empire?

2. Nevertheless, we make the effort. Historians are nosy people. But as a discipline, history has modest aims. It does not claim to know everything. It is 'the methodical investigation of the human past'. The method involves conducting investigations into specific problems (whether aggregative or longue-durée, and suited to soc-sci analysis, or humanistic-individualistic, one-offs). The very limited goal, while we remain aware of the larger chaos, is to explain the surviving evidence bearing on our problem.

3. In order to explain that evidence, we have no choice but to imagine -- imagine as many scenarios as we can, using whatever analogies, parallels, or models we can exploit to think of possible scenarios. 'But what if....'? At this point we are definitely not operating with Occam's Mach 3 [tm]. Scientists do the same, no?

4. But at the end of the day, we'll want to offer the world our best explanation of what happened, whether as a narrative or as solution-to-problem (in an argumentative essay). At this point we must, IMO, employ Occam's Razor because that is the way of disciplined thinking. Many explanations of the evidence are possible. It's possible (as far as I know) that Martians landed by the Rubicon River and spurred Caesar across . Possible, but not necessary for explaining the evidence. History is an intellectual discipline, and the discipline involves favouring the simplest explanation, by which I mean the most commonly attested human and contextually suitable reasons.

NB: This could turn out to be wrong, as new evidence emerges that is not explainable by our hypothesis. That's a risk of intellectual endeavour. It's not a great problem, however, if we understand history mainly as the doing, as the investigation itself, which is never wasted. Conclusions come and go.

5. May I offer a clear, if self-referential example? We have a tendency to attribute revolts against Rome to lofty ideals, whether in Britain, Batavia, or Judaea: people unable to bear the heavy yoke of imperial rule finally assert their freedom and revolt, even if it kills them. My recent book on the Jewish war (66-74) consciously applies this No-and-Yes approach.

No: we must first to understand and to explain the evidence with as much imagination as possible. If you treat the journey as the destination, as I do, then Occam's Razor doesn't come into it. But also Yes, for when I come to the concluding narrative, I have no choice but to favour the simplest explanation of the evidence. Whereas, for example, many people have imagined that Judaea was heaving with anti-Roman and messianic sentiment for 130 years of Roman rule before the revolt, I argue that no surviving evidence needs such an extraordinary postulate. Normal human fears and self-help in crisis better explain the evidence.

Conclusion: We don't know what happened a long time ago. Possibilities are endless. Our efforts to discover it are limited to investigations of particular problems, for which we gather, interpret, and explain evidence with all the imagination we can muster. But in the end, simply as a matter of mental discipline and in light of the need for public argumentation (our hunches are not worth much), we should favour the scenario that most simply explains the evidence. So it seems to me, but I could be wrong. :-)

Thanks to Cristina Petrescu , Rudolf Jakma and Steve Mason for your ideas and considerations. For the time being, I am more convinced by Steve Mason ´s arguments. I also consider that he undertood my question the best, perhaps due to certain difficults of my own to correctly state the question. For Cristina Petrescu said that explanations in historical research are often very complicated, and I am not trying to state otherwise. But, independently of the complexity of historical events (or present events, as Steve Mason pointed out), my point is, that you do not give more complicated explanations where no evidence points to its necessity. It is on these grounds that I think that Rudolf Jakma ´s example in aviation misses at certain extent, the point. In the case he gives, the longest explanation was the true one, but in his example, competing explanations were not only shorter, but also not backed up by evidence (they were false and short, not equally probable and shorter). Then, the Occam´s Razor does not apply in that case. They are not equally-powered alternative explanations about how the jet functions, only true or false ones, independently of its lenght.

As Steve Mason says, we have little idea of what happen(ed) and events can be of great complexity. Why giving more complex explanations and propose (unproven) explanations for events that can be explained in simpler terms?

I also want to emphasize that Occam´s Razor does not state that simpler explanations are better, only that simpler explanations of a given phenomenon are better (given same explanatory power) than other competing, more complex explanations that no carry with them more evidence to justify this more complex reasoning.

I think that in historical (or political) research, this approach could be wiser, because more complicated explanations of a given phenomenon adds, to the inherent complexity of human intentions in the past (which lead to inevitable interpretation errors to some extent) the higher complexity (more steps needed) of the more complex interpretation. So, adding more steps in the explanations, sum up anoter potential source of error, produced for the researcher himself and thus, avoidable.

Perhaps a couple of (simplified) examples will clarify my point:

1) If I put a pen on a table and afterwards leave my home to work, when I come back at night and found that pen in the same exact place, I will not argue with my wife about why she took the pen and then pretended not having used it by placing in the same exact site later on, unless I can prove it! I can develop a lot of theories based on psychological, motivational, politico-sociological theories about why she could have done it, but without accompanying evidence to support them, the Occam´s Razor would counsel me that the most probable explanation is that the pen had remained there all the time, without excluding the possibility that my wife is indeed using the pen secretly (but I would need additional evidence to prove that!). So why arguing in the first place?

2) Perhaps a more interesting example from the point of view of historical relevance:

Suppose we are trying to elucidate the guilt of people sentenced long time ago, prosecuted for serious crimes in the past. After interrogation, the defendants confess their guilt of the whole or a part of what the prosecution accusses them. Their confessions do not contradict one another and the defendants state that their confession was voluntary. Years later, it is proposed that their confessions were extracted under physical or psichological pressure (=torture). Without further evidence to support these claims, shouldn´t we reject that hypothesis until new evidence is found to support them?

Thank you for your time and careful responses! I am only an aficionado in this field and my background is very different from yours, but I am convinced that from a philosophical point of view, the methods of reasoning should not be so different in Natural and Social.Sciences.

I welcome more opinions, especially as I see that no universally accepted position is set.

of course; in my opinion it's justified in any research or study: try to get your goal with a straight line, and only when yuo can't with an arabesque.