CONCEPTS OF CATEGORY IN HISTORICAL RESEARCH

Abstract. Categories, i.e. concepts reflecting the most general and essential connections of the studied world, are of great importance in historical science. This article is devoted to the concept of categories in historical research. At the moment, no special works have been created that comprehend the development of the study of historical categories in the XIX-XX centuries.

Keywords: categories, historical science, concept.

The world of historical concepts, categories and terms of historical science is diverse. There are various systems of classification of scientific concepts and categories, but historical science is not characterized by the use and formulation of a strict categorical and conceptual apparatus, unlike a number of other social sciences (for example, law or economics), and especially natural science knowledge. The reasons for the special position of history were revealed at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries by the neo-Kantian school of philosophy of history and, above all, by the German philosopher Heinrich Rickert (1863-1936) [2, p. 342].

History can never bring its material under a system of general concepts, which is the more perfect the less empirical reality it contains, but it tries to at least get closer to the image of reality itself. One task falls to the share of natural science, the other to the share of historical science. The distinction established between natural science and history should be based on the juxtaposition of constantly operating concepts and constantly changing and becoming reality. The aim of natural science is always to represent the more or less general; the aim of historical science is to represent the more or less individual.

At the same time, the ego's position does not mean that the historian does not use general concepts in his work: for him they serve only as a means of describing and explaining a specific historical phenomenon. Since the Methodological School, historiography has used general concepts developed in history and other sciences to describe historical phenomena and processes, but their application has always been instrumental, and these concepts and categories themselves, as noted above, have never formed a single strict system, as natural sciences or such "generalizing" social sciences do, as, for example, sociology, law or economics [3, p. 3].

In this context, any classification of concepts and categories of historical science is rather conditional. From the point of view of the methodology of history, the concepts and categories used in historical research can be divided into two main groups. The first group (interdisciplinary) includes concepts and categories that have arisen outside the field of historical science. The second group (historical) includes those concepts and categories that have arisen and are used mainly in the field of historical science.

Interdisciplinary concepts and categories include two subgroups:

- general scientific concepts and categories;

- interdisciplinary concepts and categories.

General scientific categories and concepts include the main categories related to scientific work and scientific thinking, which are understood by the philosophy of science — such as induction, deduction, system, type, paradigm, scientific significance, research hypothesis, temporality, empirical reality, causality, dialectics, evolution, etc.

Interdisciplinary concepts and categories are concepts and categories that have appeared/mainly developed in other fields of knowledge, but are widely used in historical science. Recall that the peculiarity of history since its formation as a science is the orientation to methodological constructs developed in other humanities and social disciplines — sociology, psychology, philology, economics, etc.

Perhaps the most important for the historian are the concepts and categories developed in the philosophy of history and sociology (civilization, class, society, structure, generation, social memory, urbanization, etc.). Also important are interdisciplinary concepts whose origin or main research area is related to ethnology and ethnography (ethnos, mentality, myth, etc.). etc.), law and political science (monarchy, republic, democracy, autocracy, anarchy, etc.), art history (style, genre, etc.), and other sciences. Many interdisciplinary concepts were initially formed at the junction of a number of sciences — for example, at the junction of psychology, philosophy and philology, such important concepts for a historian as archetype, discourse, etc. Despite the fact that historians draw the bulk of concepts from related social sciences and humanities, categories and concepts whose origin is associated with natural and exact sciences are widely used in historical research. Of these, geography is certainly the closest to history — a complex of sciences traditionally located at the junction of social and natural science knowledge, in which the concepts of toponymy and landscape are developed. However, other disciplines also provide terms that are widely used by historians — biology (for example, ecosystem, population) and even exact sciences (for example, a set of concepts related to quantitative history, or the conceptual apparatus of synergetics, etc.

Working with the concepts of historical science, of course, we must not forget that the interpretation of not only many specific historical concepts, but also a number of concepts related to other selected groups, may differ from different scientists and evolve over time [1, p. 35].