ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how communication history might be defined and analyses the positions of strong and weak presentism as two ways of justifying the use of past ideas. Communication historians believe that they describe and investigate the same communicative reality, communication practices and the concept of communication as various past thinkers. This means that communication itself is a phenomenon independent of the inquiring observer. Dividing communication history into two parts is a methodological consequence of distinguishing between the strong and weak versions of presentism. However, one can say that such a distinction between two periods of communication history is a methodological consequence of reflexive historicising. The chapter presents implicit communication history and explicit communication history as consequences of weak presentism. It shows that dividing communication history into two parts is the key consequence of reconstructing the ways of justifying the use of past ideas.
