Blackwell Reference Online

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It is not only students of human history who reason about the past from evidence. The paleontologist trying to reconstruct an extinct animal from fossil fragments; the engineer charged with determining why a bridge collapsed; the teacher who suspects that a student may have cheated on an exam: all of these form ideas about what happened and seek to evaluate those ideas in the light of the evidence. Accordingly, philosophers interested in understanding historiographic evidence have tended to align their analyses with more general models of evidential reasoning. After a brief survey of different kinds of historiographic evidence and different approaches to understanding it, we provide an overview of the two models of evidential reasoning invoked most frequently by philosophers of historiography, the Bayesian and the explanationist models. We conclude with suggestions as to how these models can aid the formulation and understanding of two central issues in the philosophy of historiography, skepticism, and underdetermination.Historiographic evidence is extraordinarily varied. Bones, pots, and foundations are unearthed. Field boundaries, path routes, and architectural features are examined. The living are questioned orally. Data on economic activity are accumulated and exhibited in the form of lists or tables. At the heart of most historians' reconstructive efforts are written works: ... log in or subscribe to read full text