ABSTRACT
This book is designed to show how historians’ descriptions, interpretations and explanations of past events can be rationally assessed and justified. When historians begin their inquiries, they choose a topic which interests them and ask some questions about it. To answer the questions, they read widely and search for evidence which might help produce answers to them. They interpret the evidence they collect by drawing upon an informed imagination which reflects their general knowledge of human nature and social processes, and their particular expertise in the field. Imagination and insight provide most of the interesting hypotheses in history. In answering their questions, historians’ attitudes to their subject often influence their thoughts about it, so that once they have formed hypotheses in answer to their questions, it is important that the hypotheses be tested. It is at this point that the present book becomes relevant, explaining how historians’ descriptions, interpretations and explanations can be rationally assessed and justified.
