The Limits of Empiricism: The Utility of Theory in Historical Thought and Writing

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a revival of emphasis in historical research and writing on the practice of empiricism, together with the rehabilitation of those ‘epistemic virtues’ of accuracy, impartiality, objectivity, fairness, attentiveness, perseverance and the like that for so long characterised criteria for a professional mode of behaviour that would guarantee the credibility of the historian’s account. This has occurred after several decades when, under the influence of the ‘linguistic turn’ and its turn to the study of narrative constructivism, earlier claims respecting the truth value and objectivity of empirical work had come under attack among those espousing a linguistic approach to history. This article investigates the most recent efforts to integrate empiricism and theory currently being proposed by scholars in the philosophy of history and historiography and the epistemological and historiographical entailments that such an attempt necessarily involves. What is emerging at the moment is an effort to generate a synthetic approach to historiography in which elements of narrativism and empiricism are equally in play and continually modify one another in the production of historiographical representation and meaning. Whether we have yet to arrive at a successful solution to the manner best suited for such a reconciliation of empiricism and constructivism remains an open question to be discussed.