ABSTRACT
Few philosophical questions have been identified, and none has been even tentatively answered. The question is simply whether history should be regarded as a subjective or an objective study. The stock response acknowledges usefully some of the key terms in the issue, for example those of ‘bias’, ‘prejudice’, and ‘complete objectivity’. Plainly there are a number of differences between the disciplines the people now know as history and the natural sciences. Certainly historians are as a matter of fact more interested in examining a particular economy in the nineteenth century than in providing a general theory about the development of any capitalist economy. It may be that history has elements in its background which are unique; and that some of its explanatory principles really are subjective on the favoured criterion. It is quite clear, for example, that there is some reason to regard the original question as second-order.
