ABSTRACT
This chapter comprises two sections. The first investigates the general nature of historical knowledge with specific reference to olympic history, and follows a framework developed by Alun Munslow who discerns three basic models of historical inquiry: reconstruction, construction and deconstruction. The second section examines more explicit applications of historical knowledge in sport history under the heading ‘explanatory paradigms’. Historians disagree about much: the objectives of history, the meaning of facts, the construction of facts, methods of procedure, the role of theory, the basis of theory, the form of presentation. Like reconstructionists, constructionists believe that empirical evidence provides the ultimate source of knowledge about the past. Deconstructionist historians are highly sceptical of the claims to truth made by objective empirical history and they view history as a constituted narrative devoid of moral or intellectual certainty. Historians may agree that temporal contiguity meets the criteria for contextualization, however contextual relationships are not necessarily well integrated.
