ABSTRACT
In this book I have asked how can what the content of the past means be influenced by the form of its presentation? I pursued this by asking four key questions about epistemology, evidence, social theory and narrative. My thoughts on these questions were facilitated by describing the three dominant current approaches towards the historical enterprise, the twin tendencies of empiricist reconstructionism and social theory constructionism, and what I have characterised as deconstructionism. Each offers a distinctive methodological orientation towards the four questions. As we have seen, the three methodological orientations not only signpost the complexities and varieties of historical method available today, but they also reveal the fundamental differences among historians over the nature and roles of objectivity, explanation, truth, description and meaning in historical understanding.
