ABSTRACT
Anglo-American historiography has become preoccupied with empirical hypothesis testing to establish cause and effect linkages. The specialists are dealing with the pre-1834 poor law by testing, just as the proselytising pioneers have already dealt with railroads and slavery. This chapter considers the epistemologies of testing and the philosophical definitions and rationalisations of test procedures. The chapter discusses the role of test procedures in historiography and the consequences of the attempt to reconstruct historiography in the image of empiricist epistemology. It also discusses the configuration of the poor law before 1834 and offers a new account of who got what from the institution. The chapter analyses the immediate necessity for, and the ultimate inefficacy of, test procedures in various empiricist theories of knowledge. It proposes a recovery, rectification and reinstatement of other modes of analysis which have been consigned to the periphery of current Anglo-American economic and social history.
