INTRODUCTION

We need to consider now how historians should account for departures from tradition and so changes in belief. Although individuals always reach the beliefs they do against the background of inherited traditions, the traditions cannot explain how they go on to develop the beliefs they inherit. Because humans possess a capacity for agency, a logic for the history of ideas must incorporate both diachronic and synchronic forms of explanation. Because humans are capable of exercising their individual reason against a social background, a logic of the history of ideas must incorporate an analysis of thought as well as tradition. Next, therefore, I will consider why and how people reflect on the webs of belief they inherit so as to extend, modify, or even reject them. I will analyse the nature of individual reasoning as it takes place against the background of an inherited tradition.

Clearly, when historians consider changes of belief, they should continue to presume the beliefs they study are sincere, conscious, and rational. Likewise, they should continue to work with a folk psychology they apply using criteria of rationality. I will continue, therefore, to concentrate on the forms of explanation appropriate to sincere, conscious, and rational beliefs. A historian should explain departures from traditions by reference to the reasons people had for extending, modifying, or even rejecting the traditions that provided them with their initial inheritances. Our anthropological epistemology shows that people approach objective knowledge by adjusting bundles of theories in response to generally accepted facts.