Abstract
In this paper, I reconstruct the development and the complex character of Zilsel’s conception of scientific laws. This concept functions as a fil rouge for understanding Zilsel’s philosophy throughout different times (here, the focus is on his Viennese writings and how they pave the way to the more renowned American ones) and across his many fields of work (from physics to politics).
A good decade before Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle was going to mark the outbreak of indeterminism in quantum physics, Edgar Zilsel started to develop a complex logical-philosophical theory in which statistical and causal laws were given an indeterministic foundation. However, in develo** his thoughts on the emergence of regularities from disorder, Zilsel arrives at a profound ambiguity with respect to the ontological or the epistemic nature of laws and order in the world: Whether this order is to be conceived of as an empirical finding or as the product of reason – this would have to remain unclear. This tension between rationalism and empiricism, as well as a tension between a realist and an anti-realist conception of lawfulness, can be identified in both Zilsel’s Viennese and American writings: a tension which touches the core of the “problem of application” that would keep haunting Zilsel until his premature death.
I am very grateful to Massimo Ferrari, who drew my attention to the influence of Neo-Kantianism on Zilsel’s Das Anwendungsproblem, and to Monika Wulz, for many interesting and helpful remarks.
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Notes
- 1.
For the Viennese period, see especially: Zilsel (1916): Das Anwendungsproblem; Zilsel (1921): “Versuch einer neuen Grundlegung der statistischen Mechanik;“ Zilsel (1925): review of B. Bauch, Das Naturgesetz; Zilsel (1927a): “Über die Asymmetrie der Kausalität und die Einsinnigkeit der Zeit;“ Zilsel (1928): “Naturphilosophie;“ Zilsel (1930a): “Soziologische Bemerkungen zur Philosophie der Gegenwart“. For the American period, see especially: Zilsel (20032/1941a): “Problems of Empiricism“ and Zilsel (20032/1941b): “Physics and the Problem of Historico-sociological Laws,“ which can be considered as the published output of a broader research project on the concept of law (see Raven and Krohn 2003, §II.5).
- 2.
The term “empirical” must be taken with caution, since Zilsel’s historical-sociological inquiries were kindred rather to the history of ideas than to empirical-quantitative sociology. This may be the reason why Zilsel’s work was initially ignored in the emerging field of sociology of science (see Fleck 1993, 511, and in this volume). Zilsel’s views on quantitative and qualitative methods in sociology and the development of sociology as a scientific discipline can be found in Zilsel (20032/1941a, 194–195).
- 3.
For the Viennese period, see his works on the concept of genius: Zilsel (1990/1918): Die Geniereligion and Zilsel (1972/1926): Die Entstehung des Geniebegriffes. For his American period, see in particular the articles he published in 1942, “The Sociological Roots of Science” and “The Genesis of the Concept of Physical Law“ (Zilsel 2003/1942a, 2003/1942b), which are the main published output of a much broader project on the social origins of modern science (see Raven and Krohn 2003, §II.2–4).
- 4.
- 5.
Describing his conception of philosophy as a “Gesamttheorie“, which allows a unitary and transdisciplinary perspective on the problems dealt with in different sciences, Zilsel claims as early as in 1929 that a precondition for such a unitary perspective is “a conflation between the reasoning [Gedankengänge] of the natural sciences and the historical-sociological one” (Zilsel 1992/1929, 44; my translation). Arguments in favor of the unity of the sciences can be found throughout his work, e.g., in Zilsel (1928, 138), where he rejects the neovitalistic idea of an essential difference between life phenomena and physical ones, as well as in Zilsel (1930a, 411), and in Zilsel (20032/1941b), where he argues that there is no difference in principle between history and natural science with respect to the possibility of finding out laws. Furthermore, his second book on the concept of genius seems to aim directly at rejecting Dilthey’s distinction between “understanding” and “explaining” sciences (see e.g., Zilsel (1972/1926), 2 and 323).
- 6.
As Raven and Krohn remarked, “Zilsel did not believe that a program based on logical analysis and language construction could help in uniting the social and natural sciences” (Raven and Krohn 2003, xlv). More about Zilsel’s own conception of the unity of science is to be found in Raven (2003). Further points of dissent between Zilsel and the Vienna Circle are mentioned in Nemeth (1997, 159, 2011, 521). Whether Edgar Zilsel may be considered a member of the Vienna Circle is a controversial issue: Stadler (2015, 494–497), Rutte (1993) and Dahms (1993) count him as a member of the Circle; Dvořák (1981, see in particular Ch. 5) provides a more complex picture and reports a significant remembrance by Herbert Feigl: “[T]here were two outstanding brilliant minds in Vienna who, though close to us in philosophical orientation, never joined the Circle: Edgar Zilsel and Karl R. Popper. Both were convinced of their intellectual independence from us, and tried to preserve that independence by remaining outside the Circle“ (Dvořák 1981, 56).
- 7.
See Zilsel (1992/1932c).
- 8.
Zilsel writes for example in the social democratic journal Der Kampf in 1931: “Precisely because I think that Marx’s theory in its most radical version is true I struggle against its abuse. The validity of this theory has not been properly proved and confirmed yet. One should finally check it against the historical empirical evidence.” (Zilsel 1992/1931b, 214; my translation).
- 9.
Wulz gives Zilsel’s empiricism a special flavor with her interpretation of Zilsel’s concept of “application”: according to her, it would imply a “circularity and mutual dependence between the theoretical and the empirical practices […] Thus, the application is not the opposite of scientific research, but it is rather an essential component of any piece of knowledge [Erkenntnis]” (Wulz 2011, 305; my translation).
- 10.
The main example of this tendency is Zilsel’s first book, Das Anwendungsproblem (The Problem of Application), as we shall see below.
- 11.
The main example is Zilsel (2003/1942b).
- 12.
Immediately after its publication, Zilsel’s book was lively discussed (see e.g., the reviews by Bernhard Bavink (1916) and Hans Hahn (1917)), and thanks to this book Herbert Feigl even made his “existential choice” of dedicating his life to philosophy (see Dvořák 1981, 133, footnote 48). In more recent literature, however, only Dvořák (1981, Ch. 4) and Lenhard and Krohn (2006 and in this volume) had dared to discuss Das Anwendungsproblem in detail, and only Lenhard and Krohn offer a philosophical and systematical analysis. A very good reconstruction of the general epistemological tenets emerging in Das Anwendungsproblem is to be found in Wulz (2011), 296–300. I offer a detailed philosophical-systematical analysis of Zilsel’s Das Anwendungsproblem in Romizi (2019), §7.b.
- 13.
With one remarkable difference: the political background that was so evident in the Viennese writings suddenly disappears in the American ones. It is not surprising that Zilsel did not want to present himself as a Marxist and Social Democrat while trying hard to settle in the USA. On the depoliticization of philosophy of science in the USA, see Reisch (2005); however, his main focus is on the period of the Cold War and he explicitly leaves out Zilsel (see p. xiii).
- 14.
In the “Foreword” of the book, Zilsel writes: “Anyone familiar with the history of philosophy will notice how strong the present treatise depends on Leibniz, Kant and Spinoza” (1916, VI; my translation). Two Kantian features can be easily recognized in Zilsel’s book. The first is the way in which Zilsel formulates the application problem, which can be paraphrased as follows: there are scientific theories that can successfully be applied to experience – how is it possible? This question, so formulated, calls of course for a transcendental deduction: as I will show below, this is in fact the main kind of proof Zilsel uses in his book, and the second evident Kantian element. Other interesting passages of Zilsel’s book referring to Kant are: his interpretation of the so-called “copernican revolution” in Kantian philosophy (1916, 75–76; more about this below) and his interpretation of Kant’s conception of the a priori (1916, 143–145). As I will mention below, also some relationships with Neo-Kantianism can be plausibly supposed, even if Zilsel does not mention them explicitly.
- 15.
My translation of: „Ein philosophischer Versuch über das Gesetz der großen Zahlen und die Induktion“.
- 16.
This conception of natural laws is similar to Franz Serafin Exner’s, which is not surprising, since Zilsel studied physics in Vienna at the time in which Exner was a major figure at the Institute of Physics and at the University of Vienna in general (more on Zilsel, Exner and the “Austrian context” in Romizi 2019, Ch. 7).
- 17.
References to Leibniz appear repeatedly in the course of Zilsel’s book, and particularly often in the logical deduction of the doctrine of universal diverseness.
- 18.
See Romizi (2019), §6.b. (Boutroux), §4.d. and §6.a. (Fechner), and §6.c. (Peirce).
- 19.
Zilsel (1916, 31) explicitly states that with “Inhalt” he means what in Russell and Whitehead’s Principia mathematica is called “propositional function,” while his concept of “Umfang” corresponds to “class” (Russell, Couturat) or “Menge” (Cantor, Zermelo).
- 20.
Zilsel (1916, 37–38) speaks of an intension which is “indeed definite” [bestimmt] but “of colossal dimensions” [ganz außerordentlich groß; ganz kolossal groß].
- 21.
Also Meinong and Timering, both in 1915, had deduced the law of large number from a kind of compensation (Ausgleich): both authors are discussed by Zilsel in the Appendix II of the Problem of Application. The idea of statistical compensation was already common in the nineteenth century (see for example Krüger 1987).
- 22.
Unfortunately, Zilsel’s logical system and deduction are flawed, as Thomas Mormann showed me in a private correspondence and as Hans Hahn probably noted as he wrote a critical review of Zilsel’s book (see Hahn 1917. The overall tone of this review is positive, though). Zilsel himself wrote to Reichenbach in 1925: “By the way, my Application Problem contains a lot of mistakes. To make mistakes seems to adhere to the essence of philosophy; one only wishes to have a philosophical method in which right and wrong are discernible at all, and in which the mistakes are discovered as quickly as possible” (quoted in English in: Raven and Krohn 2000, footnote 71).
- 23.
Here I see not only a Kantian framework, but also a possible influence of Mach’s theory according to which the difference between the physical and the psychical is not an ontological one but only a difference of perspective on one and the same phenomena (Mach 2008/19116).
- 24.
A shift from our initial question (does Zilsel consider natural laws as being facts of nature or products of reason?) must be remarked here, since the polarity reason/nature (or theory/reality) does not correspond entirely to the polarity rationalism/empiricism. Still, Zilsel himself does not clearly distinguish the question about the relationship between our theories and reality/nature (problem of application) from the question about the relationship between our theories and experience. There is only one passage (1916, 155) in Das Anwendungsproblem in which Zilsel suddenly appears aware of this issue: here he states that he does not want to speak of reality (Wirklichkeit) anymore, but only of “the given” (das Gegebene). The concept of “the given” plays a major role in the second part of the book and it allows Zilsel to gradually substitute the “realist parlance” about the structure of nature with an “empiricist parlance” about the empirically given.
- 25.
- 26.
However, other than the classical frequentists Zilsel derives this claim from his “doctrine of universal diverseness.”
- 27.
Zilsel (1916), 12. See also p. 184: “My treatise admits only a posteriori probabilities, or, even stricter, only relative frequencies“ (my translation).
- 28.
As mentioned above, Zilsel writes in the introduction that his work is influenced especially by Leibniz, Spinoza, and Kant.
- 29.
Note that this definition would dissolve the application problem, as referred to the law of large numbers (How is it possible that mathematical probabilities fits empirical relative frequencies?), in a tautology.
- 30.
Zilsel argues in a very subtle way that an empirical justification of the law of large numbers would be aporetical (see also p. 123).
- 31.
See Zilsel (1921), where he tries to give a new foundation to statistical mechanics; Zilsel (1925, 1927a), where he defends the scientific and objective character of statistical causality and indeterministic theories; Zilsel (1927b), which is a critical review of Keynes’s famous book On probability; Zilsel (1930b/31), where he appears in the discussion on probability that had taken place in the context of the “First Congress for the Theory of Knowledge of the Exact Sciences” organized by the Logical Empiricists in Prague in 1929; Zilsel (1932a), which is a review of Mises’s Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung und ihre Anwendung in der Statistik und theoretischen Physik.
- 32.
As already mentioned, Zilsel’s belonging to Logical Empiricism cannot be affirmed without specifications (as Schlaudt (2018, 267), for example, does).
- 33.
On the issue of probability in Logical Empiricism, see Galavotti (2008).
- 34.
After a long review of the most important attempts, in the history of philosophy, to justify the validity of induction, Zilsel affirms to have found only two necessary conditions of induction, but not the sufficient ones (Zilsel 1916, 99–100).
- 35.
See Zilsel (1916), III, I, 3: “Partial causes as first necessary condition. Determinism and the lawlike character of nature” (this is my translation of the title of the paragraph; I translate here “Naturgesetzlichkeit” with “the lawlike character of nature” for lack of a better alternative).
- 36.
Interestingly, Zilsel severs the bond between causation and determinism. From his standpoint, it is precisely by getting rid of Laplacian determinism that we can infer (or – in the ontological parlance – discover) causal laws: “Now, it is clear that we would be in a very bad condition for predicting the future if we could only count on determinism: for example, if we would have to know – for predicting the rebound angle of a billiard ball – not only the angle of incidence, but also the entire state of the world, including the wind conditions in Borneo and the meteorites on Sirius” (Zilsel 1916, 102; my translation). On Zilsel and the question of scientific (in)determinism, see Romizi (2019), Ch. 7.
- 37.
In this case, I am the author of the example, not Zilsel.
- 38.
Zilsel (1916), § 93. Among the consequences of substituting an empirical concept of causation with a purely logical one is the loss of the temporal asymmetry between cause and effect: here Zilsel considers it to be an advantage. This is coherent with the Machian conception of causation as a functional dependence that Zilsel supports in later writings: see especially Zilsel (1927a). However, in this article, Zilsel considers the issue of time-asymmetry more in detail and he offers a much more differentiated picture, which takes into consideration also irreversibility (e.g., in thermodynamics). On Zilsel’s conception of temporality and its implications for his views on historical and (other) natural processes, see Nemeth (2011), section II and pp. 8–9; Wulz (2011, 2012), section 4 (“The irreversibility of the material”).
- 39.
See Zilsel (1916), 165–166.
- 40.
In this respect, Zilsel clearly thinks that both rational order and empirical (contingent) data are needed in order for scientific laws to be applied (typically, for scientific prediction): in this sense, it can be said that for Zilsel the rational and the empirical component are complementary (the so-called “Zilsel’s thesis” could be seen as a “sociological version” of this tenet. See also Zilsel (20032/1941a), 186). As he will state it many years later: “Astronomers can not predict from Newton’s law what the position of the planet Mars will be on the next New Year’s Eve. In addition to the law they need the knowledge of the positions, velocities, and masses of a few celestial bodies at some given time: they need knowledge of ‘initial conditions’ as the physicist puts it. Knowledge of a law, therefore, is not a sufficient but only a necessary condition of prediction. Evidently the same holds for history. Even if laws according to which wars between industrialized countries proceed were known, it might still be impossible to predict the outcome of the present war. Among other more intricate things we do not know is e.g. the number of airplanes on both sides.” (Zilsel 20032/1941b, 200).
- 41.
On the open-ended character of knowledge entailed in Zilsel’s epistemology and in particular in his concept of “rationalization,” see Wulz (2011).
- 42.
The concept of an “irrational residual” as related to individuality (“the much too complicated single things”) was present and discussed within the “Southwestern school” of Neo-Kantianism. Heinrich Rickert and Wilhelm Windelband, for example, deal with the irrational and not entirely explainable character of the individual in the context of their reflection about the difference between natural sciences and humanistic disciplines (cf. Rickert 2007/1896–1902, I, 231ff. and Windelband 19155, 159–160). Emil Lask criticizes this conception and ascribes the irrational character rather to everything that involves intuition (Anschauung) and sensibility: only purely logical and categorial forms would be entirely rational (cf. Lask 1923/1910, 76–79, where the terminology and some concepts are quite similar to Zilsel’s ones). Probably Zilsel was acquainted with this literature, which was very influential at that time, although he does not refer to it explicitly in this respect (there is only an explicit reference to Windelband in Zilsel 1916, 17, footnote 1 – but it concerns a different issue), and although he certainly refused some main tenets of Neo-Kantianism (see also Zilsel’s criticism of Neo-Kantianism in his later political writings (Zilsel (1992/1931a, 1992/1931b), where this criticism is related to Max Adler’s reception of it).
- 43.
See Zilsel (1916), 166.
- 44.
In some later writings, Zilsel deepens and applies his theory in various ways. In an article published in 1921 in the Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik, Zilsel tries to give a new foundation to statistical mechanics, and in particular to irreversibility, by means of what he calls Allagodenhypothese. This original term comes from the ancient Greek word allaghé, which means “change,” “variety,” and it is not difficult to recognize here the doctrine of universal diverseness. Referring to physical systems, Zilsel writes: “We ascribe to the system a kind of need for change” (1921, 148; my translation). Still in 1928, in his Naturphilosophie, Zilsel talks about “lack of order” (Unordnung) as a character of nature, which alone makes possible any knowledge of it (1928, 118–19). More than ten years after the publication of Das Anwendungsproblem, we find here almost the same arguments.
- 45.
Zilsel 1916, 169; my translation.
- 46.
Zilsel 1916, 157; my translation. Zilsel’s original sentence is difficult to render in English: Das Rationale ist nicht gegeben, sondern aufgegeben. In this case, an implicit reference to Neo-Kantianism (this time the Marburg School) is quite certain, since Paul Natorp had expressed almost the same concept in the same terms in his very renowned talk and text “Kant und die Marburger Schule” (Natorp 2015/1912).
- 47.
Zilsel 1916, 157; my translation.
- 48.
Zilsel (1916), 152; my translation.
- 49.
Still, I do not agree with Schlaudt (2018, 279) when he writes: “[…] although Zilsel only quotes Leibniz when explaining the idea of rationalization in his PhD thesis, nevertheless there is an implicit reference to the famous passage in the third volume of Capital, where Marx […] hints at the ‘rationalization’ of man’s ‘interchange’ with nature as a collective path from necessity to freedom.” Zilsel’s concept of “rationalization” in Das Anwendungsproblem seems to me to be quite different from Marx’s one (as it is clear from my reconstruction), and I see no reason to speculate about such an “implicit reference.” More plausible is Schlaudt’s suggestion if referred to Zilsel’s later writings, where the concept of “rationalization” is put in historical perspective and related to the rise of modern science and technology.
- 50.
See Nemeth (1997), 157–158.
- 51.
- 52.
The cult of the genius was supported by antidemocratic, right-wing authors like Oswald Spengler, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Othmar Spann, Carl Schmitt and others that Armin Mohler considered to be representatives of a “conservative revolution” (see Reisinger in this volume and Reisinger 2013, §3.1, where she offers a praiseworthy critical discussion of Dvořák’s (1981) political contextualization of Zilsel’s work). Zilsel believed that the other side of the veneration of few special personalities is the contempt for other human beings, and he explicitly wanted to oppose an “impure metaphysics of personality, of culture, of State, of Nation, of war […]” (Zilsel 1990/1918, 213; my translation).
- 53.
Even if he was a member of the Austrian Social Democratic Party since 1918, Zilsel showed towards the Party and his fellow Marxists the same intellectual independence he showed towards the Vienna Circle. Nicholas Jardine (2003, 86–87) seems to see Zilsel’s independence of thought as a source of confusion: “[…] for me, at least, the primary problem in coming to terms with Zilsel’s writing is the uncertainty of his standpoint. He is a self-declared Marxist and materialist but with a host of qualifications which add up to an apparent rejection of central tenets of Marxism and dialectical materialism; he is associated with the Vienna Circle while arguing forcefully against its program of reconstruction and unification of the sciences; he takes up Kantian positions but voices scorn for neo-Kantians; and so on.” On the relationship between Zilsel’s philosophy and Marxism (or scientific socialism or historical materialism, see: Dvořák (1981), Ch. 6; Wulz (2011), 305–309, (2012); Nemeth (2011); Schlaudt (2018) – however, I disagree with this latter in important respects, as my remarks in this paper make clear.
- 54.
Zilsel (1992/1929, 42–43) explicitly protests against the adoption, by some Marxists, of “the two thousand year old fatalistic misconception of determinism” (my translation). The difference between Zilsel’s standpoint and that of other Marxists in this respect can be noticed in Lukács’s review of Zilsel’s Die Entstehung des Geniebegriffes (The Origins of the Concept of Genius): Lukács criticizes the fact that here Zilsel only shows general structural correlations and nothing having the logical form of a law, namely nothing endowed with necessity (Lukács, quoted in: Maus (1972), VI–VII). As we have seen above, Das Anwendungsproblem may be considered a clear and original example of “Vienna indeterminism” or probabilism (Stöltzner 1999, 2003; Coen 2002, 2007), as I have argued more in detail in Romizi (2019, Ch. 7). This turns out to be a much better starting point than the deterministic one for arguing in favor of the historico-materialistic belief in the nomological nature of historical and social phenomena. Zilsel explicitly uses his statistical conception of scientific laws as an argument against the idea of a difference in principle between natural and social sciences: since scientific laws and causation are necessarily and in any case only partial and statistical, they can be formulated also for domains in which the degree of certainty, precision and determinacy is lower than, for example, in physics (see e.g., Zilsel 1972/1926, 321, 1930a, 411, 20032/1941a, 195, 20032/1941b). Interestingly, and notwithstanding the aforementioned differences in the conceptions of the unity of science, exactly the same line of argument was put forward by Philipp Frank (e.g., 1932, 204–209) and Otto Neurath (e.g., 1981/1936, 776). A further, very interesting and original aspect of Zilsel’s indeterminism is his concept of “mneme,” meaning the inexact repetition of the past in the present (see Wulz 2012, section 3, “Menemonic functions”). In his last writings, Zilsel still argues against determinism (e.g., Zilsel 20032/1941a, 178). In sum, there is quite a lot of evidence against Schlaudt’s claim according to which a main characteristic “of Zilsel’s account of laws is an all-embracing determinism” (Schlaudt 2018, 273).
- 55.
- 56.
See his Machian conception of scientific laws as functions in Zilsel (1927a). With respect to historical materialism, Zilsel’s standpoint is analyzed by Nemeth (2011, see esp. sections II and IV) and Wulz (2012). Extremely interesting is the kind of voluntaristic interpretation that Monika Wulz gives of Zilsel’s materialism: “The concepts of materialism and material took a practical turn in his account of materialistic historiography: He thus understood the label materialism as a decision and a demand” (Wulz 2012, 101).
- 57.
See Zilsel (1927a), 286.
- 58.
- 59.
Zilsel (1930a) offers a very detailed description of all philosophical currents he labels as “irrational” and “anti-causal,” ranging from neovitalism (Driesch) to metaphysics of history and society (e.g., Troeltsch and Spann), from anthroposophy and theosophy to indeterministic interpretations of quantum physics.
- 60.
See for example Zilsel (1992/1929), p. 33, where he defines the (modern) “harbinger of the new, worldly-rational spirit” as being the “harbinger of the spirit of causal inquiry” (my translation). See also Zilsel (1930a), 416: “The highest goal of the scientific pursuit of rationalization [Rationalisierungsarbeit] is always the relationship ‘if…then…’” (my translation).
- 61.
His criticism towards Max Adler in Zilsel (1992/1931a) can be seen as a summary (post hoc) of this development: here Zilsel charges the Neokantian Adler of excessively dwelling upon an abstract and metaphysical theory of knowledge; this should be replaced – in Zilsel’s eyes – with more concrete empirical research (see e.g., p. 79; as we have seen above, a similar criticism will be directed by Zilsel also against Neurath a year later in his review of Neurath’s Empirische Soziologie (Zilsel 1992/1932c).
- 62.
Quoted in: Dvořák (1981), 10; my translation. Zilsel wrote this letter to Moritz Schlick after his later work on the concept of genius had been rejected as Habilitationsschrift (for obtaining the venia legendi). On this decisive episode in Zilsel’s biography, see Dvořák (1981), 20–22, Stadler (2015), §9.1.7., and Taschwer in the present volume.
- 63.
Nemeth (1997, 158). Nemeth sees Zilsel’s “transposition” as an early example of naturalized epistemology.
- 64.
After the last quoted passage, Zilsel points out that also the philosophical work is conditioned by the social context in which it is pursued. However, from Zilsel’s perspective, this does not affect the validity of philosophical work: Zilsel argues that philosophers should continue to deal with problems philosophically, letting other people, in the future, inquire into the question about how the social context conditioned their philosophical work. A relinquishment of philosophy, Zilsel says, would be just as socially conditioned as new philosophical theories (see Zilsel (1992/1929), 42).
- 65.
- 66.
- 67.
It seems to be appropriate to use a prudent terminology here. Referring to Zilsel’s Die Entstehung des Geniebegriffes, Nemeth (2011, 9–10) points out: “Note that Zilsel here speaks, on the one hand, of ‘historical causes’ which effect social transformations and, on the other hand, of certain ideas and developments being ‘lawfully connected’ with them. […] By contrast, Zilsel is much more careful when it comes to the relation between those ‘transformations’ and the ‘ideas’ connected with them. The question of what kind of lawful connection is at issue is left open. This does not mean, however, that Zilsel did not suspect causal relations to be involved. […] As for physicists, so for historians the task consists in discovering functional relations and to establish what kind of lawful relations obtain.”
- 68.
Lenhard and Krohn, “The Law of Large Numbers. Edgar Zilsel’s Attempt at the Foundation of Physical and Socio-historical Laws”, in this volume, p.124.
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Romizi, D. (2022). Facts of Nature or Products of Reason? Edgar Zilsel Caught Between Ontological and Epistemic Conceptions of Natural Laws. In: Romizi, D., Wulz, M., Nemeth, E. (eds) Edgar Zilsel: Philosopher, Historian, Sociologist. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93687-7_7
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