Jonathan L. Gorman

Examples of historical writing are analysed in detail, and it is demonstrated that, with respect to the statements which appear in historical accounts, their truth and value-freedom are neither necessary nor sufficient for the relative acceptability of historical accounts. What is both necessary and sufficient is the acceptability of the selection of statements involved, and it is shown that history can be objective only if the acceptability of selection can be made on the basis of a rational criterion of relevance. 'Relevance' and 'significance 1 are distinguished. The conditions of rationality of a criterion of acceptability are examined with special reference to Popper's criterion of 'falsifiability', which is shown to fail to apply to historical writing. General conclusions are drawn about the implications of the argument for the possibility of the 'unity of science', and about the conditions which need to be met if history is to be objective.

_ Source: _Page Count 22 This is an attempt to discover and clarify the philosophical nature of what Eelco Runia claims to be his new and up-to-date philosophy of history, a programme offered in his 2014 book _Moved by the Past: Discontinuity and Historical Mutation_. His suggestion that his argument is a “dance” is taken seriously, and following an analysis of historical “meaning” and its time-extended nature it is argued that the book’s presentation commits Runia to a conception of meaning that requires more weight than he allows to the centrality of narrative understanding in history. His attempt to reconnect critical and substantive philosophies of history is analysed and criticised. His apparently inconsistent commitments to both Vico’s _verum-factum_ claim, where we can make history, and to Gumbrecht’s “presence”, where history can make us, is clarified in terms of a pragmatic philosophy that permits Runia to have the psychology-based approach that he relies upon.