Esa Itkonen
University of Turku
It is the thesis of structural monism that every science repeats the bipartite A vs. B structure of a belief, where: A = conceptual/logical relations vs. B = associative/causal relations. This is not surprising in itself, given that sciences indisputably qualify as belief-systems. But, moreover, Itkonen (2025) claims to have established this truth in some detail for the following 9 sciences: linguistics, psychology, sociology, physics, chemistry, biology, evolutionnary theory, logic, philosophy.
Now, it is the purpose of the present talk to complement this vast interdisciplinary analogy, by adding the 10th item to the list, namely historiography. In this context, and interpreted in conformity with Koselleck (1979), A = ‘Semantics of Historical Time’ vs. B = ‘Pragmatics of Historical Time’.
References
Itkonen, Esa. 2025. A plea for structural monism. Signifiances (Signifying) 8/1, 59-72.
Koselleck, Reinhart. 1979. Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp [In English: Futures past. On the semantics of historical time. New York: Columbia Universiy Press, 2004.]