Historical judgement : the limits of historiographical choice / Jonathan Gorman.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-252) and index.

Print version record.

The historical profession is not noted for examining its own methodologies. In Historical Judgement Jonathan Gorman¿s response to this state of affairs is to argue that if we want to characterize a discipline, we need to look to persons whosuccessfully occupy the role of being practitioners of that discipline. So to model historiography we must do so from the views of historians. Gorman develops the history of historiography and explores the character of historiography as presented by historians. By bringing together the ideas of historians and philosophers, Gorman presents a much more practitioner-focused examination of the discipline of history, one that will, hopefully, encourage historians to think more about the nature of what they do.

Cover; Half Title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgements; 1. The argument; 2. The philosophy of a discipline; Respect for historiography; Modelling a discipline: the truth of historical theory; Description and prescription; Justification in the second-order context: Popper and Hempel; Justification in the second-order context: Kuhn; Rival historiographies of science; 3. Writing the history of historiography; Historiography of historiography: prior considerations; Our primary sources; Our use of primary sources; Choices and questions; Character and consensus

Historiography of historiographyHistorians' self-understanding; 4. Pragmatic postmodernism; Postmodernism; Common sense and experience: Hume; Quine as postmodernist; The costs of belief; Quine not postmodern enough; 5. The room for judgement; Narrative truth; A fancy view of truth; Holistic choice; Structuring factual synthesis; Moral judgement in historiography; Notes; Bibliography; Index

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