For all their self-proclaimed dedication to objective empiricism, the mid-century neo-positivists did not so much banish metaphysical speculation from historical inquiry as they did merely submerge it. In their rush to model historical development on the predictive laws of the natural sciences, they treated archival anomalies not as invitations to local curiosity, but as irritating friction in an otherwise smooth machinery of progress. To read their treatises today is to experience a strange form of intellectual claustrophobia: one is continually ushered through grand galleries of data, only to find that every door leading to contingency or human agency has been quietly but firmly locked from the outside.
The author’s description of reading neo-positivist treatises as experiencing "a strange form of intellectual claustrophobia" primarily serves to convey which of the following attitudes toward their methodology?
- ARespectful disagreement with their focus on data collection, while recognizing their contributions to historical objectivity.
- BBemused skepticism regarding their inability to achieve the scientific rigor they claimed to champion.
- Critical disapproval of their restrictive framework, which minimizes the role of human agency and historical contingency.Answer
- DIndignant hostility toward their deliberate efforts to distort archival records to fit predetermined progress narratives.