The G07 Kid

I spent much of this weekend digging in on  some Electrohome G07 monitor chassis repair. I have a bunch of games in the bavacade that use this monitor chassis to power the glorious CRT tubes for these 1980s miracles.

All told I have at least 7 cabinets that have a G07 chassis. There may be more, but I’m not sure what chassis all my cocktails are using given I never checked, and there are four total: Rally-X, Pleaides, Galaxian, and Moon Cresta.* Along with the Wells Gardner K4600 (at least 6 cabinets have this chassis) the G07 is the most common in the bavacade. That means part of making this hobby sustainable is figuring out how to work on these models given chassis repairs are a big part of keeping games online. I’ve slowly been getting better, but I remain very much an amateur. But even hacks like me have their moments, and this week was one of them. I got two of the three non-working G07s running again, leaving me with just one non-working chassis that I can use as a donor chassis for parts given all the games with G07s are now fully operational. YES!

Trusting the process means a lot of troubleshooting, and this weekend I was pretty happy to have committed a bit more and pushing myself to do more extensive diagnostic testing of the various components for things like resistance readings, diode readings, checking if transistors are good, voltage test points, etc. All of this was Greek to me just a couple of years ago, so starting to get my head around this basic troubleshooting before replacing anything is long overdue and pretty rewarding.

I already talked about the first successful G07 repair this week in my “bavacade Repair log from 6-29-2023,” noting “I was able to repair the Condor G07 chassis that was dead by doing a cap kit, swapping out a new B+ filter cap as well as a horizontal width coil.” The cap kit was done almost a year ago, but I never got it working. Turns out the recent replacement of the B+ filter cap is what brought it back to life. The horizontal width coil was broken, so I soldered a newer one off one of the other two non-working G07 chassis, figuring better to replace the broken one while the board was out. When I re-installed the chassis in Condor it worked, but there was a slight undulation that was annoying me. So, as a test, I tried it in Robotron and the waviness was gone and it worked perfectly, so that’s where it lives right now.

This means I needed to repair one of the other two chassis for Condor, and then I was golden. The two G07 chassis I had both blew the F901 fuses (2.25 AMP @ 250V ) next to the B+ capacitor, which is the biggest capacitor on the board. After discharging the B+ filter,† I replaced the fuses, which needed to be soldered in, and then tested the G07 that came from Pole Position (I defaulted to this one because I had desoldered the horizontal width coil from the other chassis for the first fix). Initially I thought the Pole Position chassis had an issue with the flyback and/or the horizontal output transistor (HOT) given the symptoms when it originally occurred a few weeks back. But after re-soldering the fuse and re-installing in Robotron to confirm as much, there was a total vertical collapse of the heart

That’s a new one, but I’ve read about it on forum posts innumerable times. I figured I’d have to deal with it sooner or later, so I embraced the challenge to broaden my experience—learning is painful! OK, so the first thing I did was look at some of the basic troubleshooting for this, and from what I read it is possibly linked to a few different things, such as an open circuit somewhere, which requires testing each resistor in the 400 series circuit to ensure there are no infinite (OL) ohm readings. It’s also been linked to the x401 and/or X402 trasnsitors, so you wanna check the values there. I’ve read a few cases where the IC501 chip was bad and needs to be replaced, but that seems less likely. That said, the following G07 repair video did have that issue, and it does a great job walking you through common troubleshooting as well as demonstrating how to test the transistors, which was very helpful:

I tested the transistors, and they were both reading at .570, which seems normal. I then tested all the 400 series resistors and some were lower than the specs, but none were open, so not sure they are the issue. I also compared the results on a working G07 and they were fairly similar, here are the results I got for this chassis:

FR401: 69 Ohm
R401: 99 Ohm
R402: 18K Ohm
R403: 3.3K Ohm
R404: 4K Ohm
R405: 12K Ohm
R406: Vertical linearity trim pot
R407: 4.2K Ohm
R408: vertical Height trim pot
R409: 51 Ohm
R410: 6.4 Ohm
R411: 13K Ohm
R412: 13.5K Ohm
R413: 580 Ohm
R414: 3.1K Ohm
R415: 2.6K Ohm
R416: 8K Ohm
R417: 67 Ohm
R418: 1.3K Ohm
R419: 1.9K Ohm
R420: 6.6 Ohm
R421: 5.5K Ohm
R423: 2.4 K Ohm

Some of the readings are low, particularly for R404, R411, R412, R416, R417,R421, and R423, but I got similar low values for another chassis that works just fine, so I “resisted” replacing any resistors just yet given I didn’t find any open circuits, just issues with value range (assuming a low resistor value would not cause the total collapse, but I’m not positive on this). The next test would be the IC501 chip, but I was not entirely sure how to test this chip, still a blindspot for me, and I don’t have a spare regardless, so I let that sit.

There could also be an issue with soldering joints at the yoke connectors on the board but the solder was fine, but still might reflow those. Beyond that, I tested the resistors for R406 and R408 which adjust the vertical height and linearity, and they adjusting values accordingly, so I was hitting a brick wall. I even checked the diodes in the 400 circuit, but all seemed good.

At this point I decided to step away from the Pole Position chassis, and turn to the other one that wasn’t working. First thing was desolder the horizontal width coil from the chassis I just abandoned and solder it to this one. I already added the new F901 fuse, so with the width coil added and the fuse in I tested it out. The last time it had not powered on at all, whereas this time it powered on and immediately there was smoke coming out of the flyback. It had blown. This, oddly, was very reassuring because at least I knew exactly where the issue was, and I also had an extra flyback that worked. So, I replaced the flyback and tested the game again and voilà this time it worked perfectly, whew! All the work on the other one with no results but a lot of learning, and this one was a simple replacement part swap, I’ll take it every time.

I need another width coil and a working flyback, but once I have them I might even take another shot at the last non-working G07, but given no games are effected I can finally move on to the last chassis repair I need to do, the K4600 for the Centuri Challenger, so until then!

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*I’ve yet to dismantle a cocktail cabinet, but that task will probably be coming soon given some work needed on my Pleiades cocktail cabinet, I don’t trust the adjustable metal legs on that game and want to get them properly lubricated and adjust with the write screws.

† Capacitors are designed to hold a charge, and when you blow the F901 fuse that charge has nowhere to go, which makes these big capacitor dangerous to the touch. Whenever removing this board do not grab it from underneath before discharging the G07 cap. You can do this by using an insulated screw driver that is connected to a ground via an alligator clip to ensure the charge has somewhere to go. To ground it, make sure the screw driver touches the + and – posts, read more on this on the KLOV forums here.

bavacade Repair Log 6-29-2023

This is just a quick update to document some of the work happening recently in the bavacade. It has a been a bit of catch as catch can given how busy the last month has been with the Reclaim open conference the and coming virtual event in July. That said, I’ve been sneaking in work here and there in the mornings, and as usual it adds up. I already blogged about the Yie-Ar Kung-fu custom cabinet project, and will be a summer long endeavor, but it’s very exciting. I also documented some of my work a couple of week’s ago testing various parts I bought in the US in the “Arcade Therapy” post, so things are definitely moving along.

Arcade Therapy

More recently I have been testing some spare boards I have, namely a spare Make Trax board as well as spare Super Cobra board. This was also part of my attempt to start organizing all my parts and spares in the basement and get some semblance of order. I find testing and labeling when things worked saves me a ton of time, and some of the metadata on the boxes noted that these boards were questions marks. Also, I was looking to test a Crush Roller board in Make Trax I was sure I’d bought and brought to Italy over, but turns out I am either delusional or simply left it in Fredericksburg. Either way, because I’m obsessed I bought another Crush Roller board I found for a decent price in Germany along with a spare Moon Cresta board. The latter board is for the cocktail cabinet in Zach Davis is minding for me in Portland, Oregon, and I want to install and test the high score save kit on this one before shipping it back once I am in New Orleans next month.

Anyway, back to the spare Make Trax and Super Cobra boards. The Make Trax spare works, but the sound is noisy. It’s as if the sound pot is not working correctly and there it is too loud and scratchy, so will need to track that down a new potentiometer (pot) and see if tracing the audio gives me any insight. This board will be the first real PCB work (besides my botched Stargate repair attempts) I’ve attempted in earnest, and I’m hopeful it’s the start of some basic board work.

If it goes well, the second project will be Super Cobra, which has an issue with the high score save kit. There are weird special characters in the high score save (HSS) kit and free play is not working. When I substituted the original roms—this board has several ROMs removed given they are programmed on the HSS kit—and Z80 chip from the working board the special characters went away. That said, there was then a strange rebooting issue with the game that did not happen with HSS kit in, so I’m going to buy new chips and  burn the Super Cobra roms (a first for me). After that, I’ll try to track down the random rebooting issue, which is definitely an issue I can isolate to that board, should be fun!

As far as other work, I am making headway on monitor chassis repair. I had the spare Hanterex Polo in Cheyenne sent in for diagnosis given the original is stuck in the US on what’s shaping up to be an almost a 6-month wait, which I’m not thrilled about. I’ll keep pushing on the US repair, but in the meantime if the spare board is fixed here in Italy I can finally get this game back online. If that happens, then I’m just one G07 chassis and one K4600 chassis away from having everything running. I was able to repair the Condor G07 chassis that was dead by doing a cap kit, swapping out a new B+ filter cap as well as a horizontal width coil, and the chassis is working pretty well, but there’s a slight undulating wave that Tommaso tells me is good enough, but it’s annoying me, so I do think I need to replace all the adjustment pots, especially for vertical linearity and vertical hold.

In fact, I was certain I bought spare G07 pots, but I can’t find them for the life of me (part of the quest for order undertaken this week), so I’ve been parting out one of my extra, non-working G07 chassis. I’m also waiting on some 1.25 AMP fuses that should come today to try and get the chassis that came out of Pole Position working again. I think this chassis has either a bad flyback or a bad voltage regulator given there has been a recent cap kit done already. I might also need to swap the B+ filter cap. If that works, it will be put in Robotron, which leaves only the K4600 chassis for Challenger (I put Challenger‘s 4600 into Venture to get that game up and running) to repair. I’m not sure what is up there cause I swapped flyback and there was a recent cap kit, so a bit perplexed, but hopefully we some poking around and testing that will be the final piece of the puzzle. This is where the chorus sings, “Hope springs eternal in the bava heart.”

Finally, I have the Make Trax cabinet totally stripped and with Alberto to add wheels because every game will be on wheels sooner than later in the bavacade. The cabinet, overall, is close to mint save the control panel overlay which cracking. When Tim and I were getting Reclaim Arcade up and running I came across an original control panel overlay for this game and snagged it, it was one of the things that came over with the container so I asked Alberto iof he could remove the old one and add this one, and as he says to everything, “No problem!” He’s the best! He removed the old one, which by all accounts from Tim is a totally nightmare, and got it sanded and cleaned up.

After that, he put on the new overlay and it looks like new! So good. Sometimes those things I bought that I thought “Will I use this” are now almost all in use, and that makes me happy.

I think the next game to go on wheels will be Elevator Action, so will start taking that one apart, and that will mean 16 of the 30 games in the bavacade will be on wheels, and that means I am have crossed the half-way mark, which is encouraging progress! It also means I will have stripped almost every game down to just the cabinet if I manage to get wells on all of them. That’s pretty awesome.

Everyday Cycling Adds Up

I joined a couple of challenges as part of Bike Month but deliberately didn’t do too much more than normal. I wanted to see what that would look like. I normally bike to the office four days a week (just over 2.5 km each way). I bike to swim practice once a week. I visited… Continue reading Everyday Cycling Adds Up

Arcade Therapy

I’m back from a trip to both Fredericksburg, Virginia for Reclaim Open and after that Long Island, New York for some extended family time. All of that coming off several days in Lisbon, Portugal, so I was feeling the effects of being on the road for a bit. I have a lot to say about Reclaim Open, and that will begin here shortly, but before that I need to ease back onto the blog, so I’ll highlight some of my recent work in the bavacade.

Turns out the arcade work can also do double-duty as a kind of re-entry therapy. My bipolar gets pretty acute when I’m on the road and away from the family for a while. If I’m not mindful my thoughts can begin to spiral. So for this re-entry—before blogging or jumping headlong back into work—I took some time to tinker on a few games. I usually lug a bunch of arcade parts, repaired boards, chassis, etc. back from the US, and this trip was no different.* On top of the random parts, I also retrieved a few game boards I had shipped during my last trip to the US in February (including Sidam’s Condor, Exidy’s  Cheyenne, and Nichibutsu’s Moon Cresta). On top of that, I took a few with me from Italy, namely a Moon Patrol bootleg board with sound issues, a Bagman with sprite issues, and my back-up Yie-Ar Kung-fu board. So, in short, a lot of boards to be looked at, and below is the tale of the tape for board repairs:

• The Sidam Condor board had a boot issue and missing star field caused by a bad 74LS32 chip. Mike ordered a MN6221AA melody chip and replaced that.  The last problem was that the foreground was shifted to the left, cutting off the “F” in Fuel on the left hand side of the screen. This was fixed by replacing chip 74LS00 at location J4. Seems like pin 6 of that chip was stuck at a logic high and never moved.
• Moon Patrol bootleg- dead sound cpu, replaced but still no sound. Traced sound all the way back to the amp. The problem was the folks who made this bootleg pcb switched the +/- speaker wires on the edge connector. Simply swapping the wires at the speaker fixes this.
• Yie-Ar Kung-Fu – there was nothing wrong, no graphics problems, sound or control issues. This means power is the issue creating sprites, need to test this hypothesis once that cabinet is put back together, more on that custom project setup shortly
• Bagman – the Z80 cpu was bad, but Mike did not report any sprites issues after it was fixed. I had recurring sprite issues and assumed it was a board/chip issue, but turns out it was power, as it always is. +5V DC needed to be raised a tad.
• The issues with the Cheyenne board were linked to the 440 Multi-kit. Turns out the the sound portion of the Exidy kit was causing the no sound condition.The logic portion (the kit) had a problem coming from the GAL chip. Specifically, addresses 14 and 15 were missing and these addresses get generated by the GAL chip.  The game boots and plays fine, but opted to remove the 440 Exidy kit and re-install original Cheyenne chips, now to fix that Hanterex Polo to get Cheyenne back up and running after nearly 10 months of that game being offline.
• Moon Cresta was a strange issue, it was working fine until Zach and I tried swapping out the main CPU chip for a high-score save kit. Once we did that the game just threw garbage to the screen. Turns out the chip (and or high score save kit) needed to be soldered directly to board given the socket was not making contact with the chip’s legs— which seems odd. That said, the board is working again without the high score save kit, so might need to solder the HSS kit directly to board, we will see.
• The non-working spare Dig Dug board was the final one Mike worked on, and that board had a bunch of missing chips, so that was a full blown salvage mission, but it works a treat.

That’s a fair amount of board work, but as of now there are no bad boards,. This will be a short-lived victory, but I’ll take it.

Next up is monitor chassis repairs.  I have two G07 cap kits (Robotron and Condor) I need to do, as well as a K4600 capkit for the Centuri Challenger. After that, the final project is the Hanterx Polo, which has been drawn out way too long, so I’m trying to resolve that sooner than later.

The other work happening has just been some random testing of parts and boards I brought back, such as testing a 15-pin Williams power brick for Make Trax: it works fine. I’ve also been testing boards like Condor (looks and sounds amazing)  Bagman (working again and power adjustment fixed the power-induced sprite issue), Dig Dug (works perfectly), and Zach reported back Moon Cresta is all systems go. So Cheyenne, Moon Patrol, and Yie-Ar Kung-fu are the last boards to test, but two out of the three will need to wait until the games are back online. That leaves Moon Patrol, and I’ll be testing that here soon.

This weekend I fell down a repair rabbit hole. I picked up a degaussing coil in the US, and brought it back to add the final touch to Exidy’s Venture (one of my absolute favs) which had a bit of discoloration on the CRT. The degaussing fixed the issue, but soon after the game was freezing and eventually it seemed the monitor was cutting out. When I adjusted voltage the screen came back, but this time with mono-chromatic colors and it was out of  sync. Major bummer. I started troubleshooting which lasted deep into Sunday to finally learn the monitor’s fine, but one of the chips that controls the color and sync (chip 13C) needed to have the solder re-flowed. I did that and re-seated everything and the game started working again and looking better than ever. That was a small, but rewarding, win.

It all becomes pretty consuming for me (which is true of most everything I do), but I find that focused attention and tinkering to solve small, elusive problems can be just what the doctor ordered when trying to return to a much needed work/life rhythm. Arcade therapy! But not so much playing the games these days as fixing them which is a really pleasurable, if unexpected, consequence of getting into this hobby.

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*I even found all my Dungeons & Dragons maps and guide books feared lost, but that is a post for another day.

April Challenges I’m Not Doing But Maybe You Would Enjoy Them

It’s April. Spring! And it’s also the month of fitness challenges it seems. There’s the 30 Day Cycling Challenge. We blogged about it here. I won’t make it for all 30 days. I’ve got knee surgery on the 11th. But so far I’ve managed 3/3. Day 1 was an outdoor ride with Sarah. Day 2… Continue reading April Challenges I’m Not Doing But Maybe You Would Enjoy Them

On the General Hermeneutic; Quentin Skinner on the task of the Historian, part I

As Sam James’s debate with the great John Pocock showed, there are very special problems attendant on writing the history of the present, because you’re going to be writing about people who can answer back. I mean, I never had the problem that, when I explained the precise ideological orientation of Hobbes’ political philosophy, Hobbes will be able to publish an article in which he rubbished what I had said. But this, of course, was what John Pocock sought to do in this particular case. I’m not going to try to adjudicate; I thought that Sam James’s work was wonderful, and very challenging.

But what I want to say, on my own account, is that the approach that I’ve been trying this afternoon to sketch in talking to you purports to be a general hermeneutic. That’s to say, it’s generally applicable — applicable to the present, of course, because it’s generally applicable. So, it’s not just a story about how to get at the past. If you try to use it to get at the present, you encounter all the special problems of trying to get at the present, which I just alluded to. There are special difficulties, of course, attendant on writing contemporary history. And that’s not just because people can answer back; it’s also for a deeper reason, which we’re all familiar with, which is that it’s much more difficult to see our own concepts and our own arrangements as contingent. The goal of the historian, as I’ve been talking about this figure, is to show the contingency of the questions that are raised in the history of philosophy: the extent to which they can be understood if, and only if, you studied the circumstances in and for which they were written. But it’s very much harder, I think, to see your own concepts as having the same kind of contingency. If you see them as wholly contingent, it’s hardly going to be very easy to affirm their truth. So, I think that the history of the present has very great difficulties with attaining the kind of objectivity to which my approach aspires. I think that the historian can at least aspire to give you a sort of objective account — it might not be the account that the agent themselves will give of philosophical works in the past — [but] much more difficult to do it on ourselves.--Quentin Skinner (January 28, 2023) interviewd by Ming. [emphasis added--ES]

Perhaps because when I was younger I was rather polemical toward Quentin Skinner's methodological (and interpretive) historiographic positions an unusual number of people called my attention to the interview with Skinner I have partially quoted above. I had little interest in reading the interview because Skinner has been interviewed rather frequently, and by people who don't really challenge him. But because so many people suggested to me I should read it, I decided to take a look. Somewhat predictably it has triggered a new round of polite disagreement in me.+

I am happy I did so because the interview is fascinating; in it we learn a lot about the origins and development of the Cambridge Texts series that shaped how multiple disciplines could teach the past and how scholars could research it. In addition Skinner says insightful things on the frequently self-deceptive nature of autobiographical writing. And -- the piece has a lot of riches --for people who have just come to the Cambridge school he makes some helpful claims about its intellectual roots of it in twentieth century philosophy.* Go read the full interview yourself!

Now, the paragraph I quoted from the interview occurs in the context of a question about a debate between Samuel James and Pocock about Pocock's "earlier work." Somewhat oddly, during the interview with Skinner it is never stated that James is denying the purported unity of the Cambridge school (concluding there are at least two "strands" if not two "enterprises"). As it happens this is a topic that has already been broached during the interview because Skinner had already stated, "I don’t think it’s helpful to suppose that there’s a Cambridge School." And while there is a way to parse Skinner's claim that makes it distinct from James' argument it is quite at odds with Pocock's own claim (reiterated in response to James) to have helped lay the foundations for the Cambridge school that (on Pocock's telling) was invented by Skinner in his famous (1969) essay! That is, Skinner has already denied the terms of the debate between James and Pocock, so, if Skinner is right, there is no need to adjudicate it. There is, if one presses on this topic, much more such comedy running through the interview (not the least the status of Skinner's utterances on the nature of the Cambridge school in light of the "very great difficulties" diagnosed by himself.) Perhaps, I'll return to that some time.

But my present interest is in the status of a general hermeneutic that seems to be applicable in all circumstances. Now, what is striking and highly revealing in Skinner's formulation of such a hermeneutic, is that "The goal of the historian, as I’ve been talking about this figure, is to show the contingency of the questions that are raised in the history of philosophy." I leave aside the really tough question whether a general hermeneutic is really possible. Although to note skeptically that it reminds me of the hope that methodologists of science once had to discover a logic of induction or a general methodology of science.

Rather, here I focus on the oddity to posit this ["the contingency of the questions that are raised in the history of philosophy"] as the goal of any historian let alone the historian of philosophy for at least three reasons: first, shouldn't the purported contingency of the questions be established by historical enquiry and not be presumed? I don't deny that sometimes, perhaps often, this is a conclusion of historical research. Some historians allow us to celebrate such continency (think of Daston, Justin Smith, etc.). However, even if one denies that there are eternal questions, it is still possible, say, that bits of philosophy are institutionalized as authoritative in a context (think Aristotle and Thomas in the Catholic Church, or Mencius in the Chinese bureaucracy, or Buddhism in the Ashoka empire and its aftermath) that then shapes centuries of fairly constrained enquiry,

One need not be a structuralist to see that if one posits a trade-off between population and luxury spending (as Socrates does in the truthful city) the modeling space is highly constrained even if there are huge technological and demographic changes (as Malthus noticed).  Fill in your own example. I put it in terms of types of models because it is far more likely that there is going to be continuity between or rediscovery of those, even though the tokens have all kinds of external commitments unrelated to the trade-off under issue. That may sound like cheating, but often later authors (not just Malthus, but also Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Berkeley, Smith, and Mill) explicitly refer back to Plato's version. 

Back in 1969, Skinner linked the denial of the sameness of questions to the impossibility of learning from the purported "solutions" of past thinkers to our (perennial) questions or the ones we put to them. Fair enough. But this criticism cannot be directed at the idea that Plato's solutions (birth-control, enhancements, different property arrangements) are very much still explored in much greater depth in these types of two-factor models. (Not that I want to turn you into a population ethicicist or an anachronistic political economist.)** 

Second, shouldn't the historian of philosophy, especially, be allowed to focus on other goals (e.g., what happened, why did it happen, how did we get from then to now, which arguments are worth a second look, etc.)? I don't mean to be exhaustive here. There are a plurality of goals in the pursuit of historical enquiry as such and also in the history of philosophy. In a lot of these, the question of contingency may arise only side-ways. 

Of course, I don't mean to deny -- in fact it is highly salient -- that Skinner's position is articulated in, and received some of its plausibility from, the historical aftermath of what was thought to be the demise of the principle of sufficient reason (which is highly intolerant of contingency). This demise was marked by Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being and Russell's rejection of the PSR (alongside Bradley's idealism). But if historical fortune shifts, and the PSR is re-animated (as Della Rocca argues) then it's foreseable Skinner's approach will seem just special pleading.

Third, there seems to be an unstated assumption that if we understand a question in its proper context, it's contingency is revealed; but this, too, presupposes what needs to be argued or shown. Why can't the original context reveal that a certain question was over-determined? Once Hershell discovered the first binary star system and that they obeyed Kepler's laws, it was pretty predictable that questions about the nature and mechanism of action at distance would be re-openend. Of course, this debate was constrained by new theories and conducted in terms that were more mathematized than earlier versions. Even if one allows, as I do, genuine incommensurability between scientific theories, the continuity of and refinement in evidence creates the possibility of asking questions that are overdetermined and that are, in a certain sense, continuous with each other even if particular at a time. 

Skinner also seems to be claiming, in addition, that if the questions are contingent then it follows that the concepts used in answering them, including our own, will also be contingent. (I infer that from his implied claim we have to see our "own concepts as having the same kind of contingency.") But even if one grants that the questions philosophers have asked are contingent, it does not follow that the conceptual structure that are part of the answers to these questions are contingent. After all, given certain starting point X -- that, let's stipulate is contingent -- what follows from X, namely the answers or concepts Y, can be a kind of hypothetical or conditional necessity. And it would be odd to call Y 'contingent.' Certain questions can have only a narrow range of answers, not the least because earlier folk can shape the manner of later uptake.

Skinner is, thus, naturally read as claiming that his general hermeneutic is callibrated to show that all philosophical questions and answers are contingent. In fact, in the interview this is the view he attributes to Collingwood (something already present in Skinner's famous 1969 essay) as follows:

[Collingwood] and his numerous followers always insisted that the history of philosophy, and perhaps especially of moral and political philosophy, should be written as an account, not of how different answers were produced for a set of canonical questions, but rather as a subject in which the questions as well as the answers are always changing, and in which the questions are set by the specific moral and political issues that seem most salient, most troubling, at different times — and they will continually change and people will continually find that the pressures of their societies are operating in such a way as to raise new questions. 

This is indeed Collingwood's view in the Autobiography. The only sameness that Collingwood allows there is the process that gets one from one question to the next answer. But in Collingwood the claim is linked explicitly to a metaphysical claim, which is simultaneously a claim about metaphysics: that at any given time metaphysics just is what people "believe about the world's general nature" and the history of such beliefs. In fact, the whole Autobiography is almost a carricature, albeit an highly entertaining one, of late historicism. Back in 1969, Skinner Himself granted that it was "excessive" because according to Collingwood (and now I quote Skinner 1969): "we cannot even ask if a given philosopher "solved the problem he set himself."" 

Such historicism (and its valorization of the creative and wholly ideosyncratic genius lurking in it) may be true, of course, but it is odd to think that it can be safely presupposed in one's general hermeneutic today. Skinner himself is, of course, much more cautious than Collingwood and, as far as I know, does not rest his own case on such historicism or such claims about metaphysics. But once we remove it from this wholly skeptical position that only a history of beliefs is possible and no knowledge (not even partial of the world's general nature) there is really not much to say on behalf of the idea that "there are only individual answers to individual questions."

But -- you can probably see this coming a mile away -- while Collingwood's 'logic of question and answer' is fully intelligible, even anchored by, and part of a whole cloth that involves such a historicism (including commitments to the unity of epochs and cultures, the denial of the PSR, etc.), in Skinner it is just special pleading. While I will not assert that one's hermeneutic is always beholden to one's metaphysics -- if that were so no historical understanding would be possible --, it should also not be the case that one's hermeneutic settles metaphysical questions by fiat. 

Without Collingwood's broader metaphysical commitments, Skinner's focus on contingency seems arbitrary. That is, somewhat paradoxically, the general hermeneutic is itself best understood as more informative of the commitments of the Skinnerite historian, perhaps even revealing of Skinner's unwritten autobiography, and so best applicable to the recent present than the past.++

 

 

+Yes, I am mellowing. Also, Skinner has charmed me. It's much easier to be polemical with a person you have never met or who can't talk back, then someone you may run into at the British Liberary.

*There is one oddity: Skinner says that "Straussianism was, and is, in the United States the prevailing way of approaching texts in the history of moral and political philosophy. " I really don't think that's right anymore, if it ever was so.

**In the piece Skinner endorses Annabel Brett's idea that the historian, in the present, can be position "precisely as an outsider, a critical observer or reporter"  who can unmask and bring to light the ideological slant of what is reported/found. Whether these types of models are ideology or something else is certainly worth asking, perhaps even necessary to ask; but the stance of an outsider is one of many a historian of philosophy can occupy.  

++I don't think any of this criticism undermines Skinner's works on the past. 

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