Treating a research principle as a historical cause explains nothing.

Evidence

One often reads in historical narratives the generic expression: “relation of forces favourable, or unfavourable, to this or that tendency”. Thus, abstractly, this formulation explains nothing, or almost nothing—since it merely repeats twice over the fact which needs to be explained, once as a fact and once as an abstract law and an explanation. The theoretical error consists therefore in making what is a principle of research and interpretation into an “historical cause”. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 757

Categorization

• DEFINE: Warns that ‘relation of forces’ is a principle of interpretation, not an explanatory cause.