Gene Wise sku-14144775 All Manuals & Guides Paperback

Gene Wise's American Historical Explanations: A Strategy for Grounded Inquiry is a paperback in All Manuals & Guides, SKU sku-14144775. First published in 1980, it appears in Minnesota Archive Editions, which uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books accessible without altering the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In this edition, Wise extends his study of historical thinking to work in American Studies, social history, ethnography and psychohistory. He argues that historians work through assumptions he calls "explanation forms," comparing them with Thomas Kuhn's paradigms in scientific inquiry. Reading historical and cultural texts by V. L.

Parrington, Lionel Trilling and Perry Miller, among others, he identifies forms used by groups of American historians and examines how one set of assumptions gives way to another. The book addresses changes in ideas beyond historiography, including literature, the social sciences and the arts.