Most people are unable to fathom that as a species we are not always capable of determining the cause of a phenomenon in science; they therefore assume that every social problem has an explanation that they already understand. This form of arrogance is absurd. Humans discover more and more about how the brain affects social behavior every year, rendering any assumption that an answer must lie within our current range of knowledge ridiculous. As described in Masha Gessen’s “The Dying Russians”, Eberstadt understands that with current information it might be impossible to officially determine the cause of the high mortality rate in Russia. While Eberstadt is more interested in the general phenomenon of depopulation, he employs an extremely structured method to try and determine the cause of high mortality and “systematically goes down the list of the usual suspects” (Gressen). He does, however, conclude that he cannot offer an explanation for the deaths. Eberstadt uses historical instruments of explanation such as previous trends in Russian history (population decline in 1917-1923) to analyze the cause of high mortality in Russia.

In political science, most theories are formed based on the past. While it is significantly easier to form a correct theory with hindsight and illustrate correlation, it is extremely difficult to prove causation. Whereas Eberstadt took a historical approach of sorts, Parsons explores “the cultural context of the Russian mortality crisis”, and uses cultural instruments of explanation to attempt to understand the phenomenon”. As Gressen points out, the obvious flaw in Parsons investigation is that the interviews were carried out over a decade after the phenomenon, and were conducted with survivors. While it may be easy to determine a correlation between the sense of worthlessness that Russians feel and high mortality rates, causation is extremely difficult to prove after the fact. One could argue that the answer for the large number of deaths in Russia is a simpler form of a “truth” that lies beyond science. I consider that “truth” to simply represent the knowledge we do not yet have, and striving for the unreachable is what allows that knowledge to be acquired.