Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Our Knowledge of the Past
- Introduction: The Philosophy of Historiography
- 1 Consensus and Historiographic Knowledge
- 2 The History of Knowledge of History
- 3 The Theory of Scientific Historiography
- 4 Historiographic Opinion
- 5 Historiographic Explanation
- 6 The Limits of Historiographic Knowledge
- 7 Conclusion: Historiography and History
- References
- Notes
- Index
2 - The History of Knowledge of History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Our Knowledge of the Past
- Introduction: The Philosophy of Historiography
- 1 Consensus and Historiographic Knowledge
- 2 The History of Knowledge of History
- 3 The Theory of Scientific Historiography
- 4 Historiographic Opinion
- 5 Historiographic Explanation
- 6 The Limits of Historiographic Knowledge
- 7 Conclusion: Historiography and History
- References
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Uniquely heterogeneous and uncoerced consensus on beliefs, following a consensus on theories and cognitive values was established among a large group of historians almost simultaneously in much of what would become Germany during the first half of the nineteenth century and spread from there to the rest of the world. The unusual (Laudan, 1984) simultaneity of the acceptance and spread of consensus on historiographic beliefs, theories, methods, and cognitive values occurred because they were imported wholesale to historiography from other disciplines – biblical criticism, classical philology, and comparative linguistics – where they had already been established earlier. The spread of these theories and cognitive values was gradual geographically across the Rhine and the disciplines, through historiography to evolutionary biology and archeology and backward, when newer disciplines exported back improved methods and theories to the disciplines from which they had imported them earlier. The expanding overlapping theoretical basis of these disciplines allowed them to achieve scientific consensuses on beliefs since the second half of the eighteenth century. In this chapter, I trace the historical development of this overlapping theoretical basis. The next chapter analyzes the results of this study in philosophical terms.
An identical set of cognitive values and theories both defines the community of historians, and must be assumed in the current inquiry into the historical emergence of this community of historians.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Our Knowledge of the PastA Philosophy of Historiography, pp. 46 - 91Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004