This week’s slidesHAP 04 — Conceptions of Inquiry
Read with the three histories in view. For each reading ask: what is the fact and its evidence (History 1); what theory turns the evidence into support (History 2); what conception had to be in place for the question to arise at all (History 3).
Readings
- Abímbọ́lá, Kọ́lá. “The Òrìṣà Legal Tradition.” Philosophia Africana 20(2), 2021: 107–128. PDF — §4 on Twining’s nine Westphalian assumptions and why the Òrìṣà tradition is a legal tradition: the “mapping law” argument applied.
- D’Oro, Giuseppina & James Connelly. “Robin George Collingwood.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. — read before Collingwood.
- Collingwood, R. G. The Idea of History. Rev. ed., ed. Jan van der Dussen. Oxford University Press, 1993. (Part V, §§1–3)
- Twining, William. “Taking Facts Seriously.” Journal of Legal Education 34 (1984): 22–42. Open access — the original 1980 address that became Chapter 2 of Rethinking Evidence (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2006; chapter on Cambridge Core via Howard Library).
- Brown, Stuart, John Fauvel & Ruth Finnegan (eds.). Conceptions of Inquiry: A Reader. Methuen / Open University, 1981. (Introduction; Part 4) no online copy — read the pieces it collects, in the open: Lakatos, “Science and Pseudoscience” (1973 radio lecture, LSE — text and audio); “Theory and Observation in Science,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Hanson’s theory-ladenness); “Scientific Objectivity,” SEP (Weber and the values debate); and Kuhn’s Structure, chs. 1–2, in Topic 5.
- Finnegan, Ruth. Oral Literature in Africa. Open Book Publishers, 2012 [1970]. Open access — Chapter 1.
- Abímbọ́lá, Kọ́lá. “Questions and Answers: The Logic of Preliminary Fact Investigation.” Journal of Law and Society 29(4), 2002: 533–559.
Further reading
- Verran, Helen. Science and an African Logic. University of Chicago Press, 2001. (Google Books preview)
- Twining, William. Globalisation and Legal Theory. Butterworths, 2000. (Chapter 6, “Mapping Law”) no online copy — for the same argument in short form, open access: Twining, “Legal R/realism and Jurisprudence: Ten Theses” (2016, UCL Discovery).
- Collingwood, R. G. An Essay on Metaphysics. Clarendon Press, 1940. (Chapters 4–5)
- Abímbọ́lá, Wándé. Ifá: An Exposition of Ifá Literary Corpus. Oxford University Press, 1976.
- UN News, “UN tells the world: stop making Africa look small” (4 Sept. 2026) — the “Correct the Map” resolution.