ABSTRACT
Recent debate over the nature of historical narrative has been carried out in terms of the adequacy of the story form of discourse to the representation of reality. Historical theorists such as the Annalistes, who were interested in transforming historiography into a science, could legitimately point out that the natural sciences had little interest in storytelling as an aim of their enterprise. And indeed, it could be argued with some pertinence that the transformation of a field of study into a genuine science has always been attended by an abandonment of anything like an interest in inventing a story to tell about its object of study in favour of the task of discovering the laws that governed its structures and functions. According to this view, the prevalence of any interest in storytelling within a discipline aspiring to the status of a science was prima facie evidence of its proto-scientific, not to mention its manifestly mythical or ideological, nature. Getting the ‘story’ out of ‘history’ was therefore a first step in the transformation of historical studies into a science.
