ABSTRACT
Despite their achievements, the arguments of the pre-1883 historical school – in Germany, Britain and elsewhere – were fatally flawed in methodological terms. Part of the problem was their belief that theory could build on mere data, and that facts could be ascertained independently of concepts or theories. Today, philosophers of science almost universally reject this view. But only in the latter half of the twentieth century, with the decline of positivism, did it become widely recognised by philosophers that all descriptions of facts are theory-laden, and all descriptions are dependent on prior theories and conceptual frameworks. In short, no fact can be identified, nor given any meaning whatsoever without some pre-existing conceptual framework.
