Abstract

Teny Pinkard's discussion of explanation in science and history raises some issues important for social science generally, as well as for history. I would like to focus on his analysis of the relationship between explanation and understanding, with the aim of reopening an issue which his treatment appears to have closed. In doing so, I hope to encourage further analysis of the problem of how we ‘understand’. My own discussion of this issue will be brief, moving only a little beyond Pinkard's. Primarily. I hope to show that ‘understanding’ is in fact a problem, and one that cannot merely be viewed as secondary to an analysis of ‘explanation’