ABSTRACT
Historiography is not “objective.” Since no historian can survey all the primary
data-both witnesses and documents are inevitably lost to time-the writing
of history requires selectivity and interpretation. Nevertheless, professional
historians give allegiance to “the continuing authority of a somewhat outdated,
but still in many ways influential, philosophy of science” (Megill, 1989, p. 627),
which impels them to practice a certain way of knowing. Their “historical
method” examines the empirical evidence of original documents and artifacts,
which are then sifted and hypotheses advanced and progressively falsified, until
a consensus may emerge about the likeliest interpretations. This is important
to understand as, in this chapter, we trace the boundary work performed among
technical communicators by the object of the infamous Just document.
