Our Knowledge of the Past

Aviezer Tucker teaches at Queen's University Belfast. He has held research fellowships at the Australian National University, New York University, Columbia University and the Central European University. He has taught at New York University, Long Island University, Trinity College and Palacky University, and he is past president of the Society for Philosophy of History. He works on epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of history and social and political philosophy. In addition to Our Knowledge of the Past Professor Tucker has also published The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence: From Patocka to Havel (Pittsburgh University Press, 2000) and numerous articles in journals like Philosophy, Inquiry, Erkenntnis, Studies in History, Philosophy of Science, History and Theory and Philosophy of the Social Sciences.

• Introduction. The philosophy of historiography; 1. Consensus and historiographic knowledge; 2. The history of knowledge of history; 3. The theory of scientific historiography; 4. Historiographic opinion; 5. Historiographic explanation; 6. The limits of historiographic knowledge; Conclusion. Historiography and history.

Review of the hardback: 'This is an important work on a topic - the development of a scientific approach to historical knowledge. Tucker treats this problem both historically (tracing the emergence of a scientific approach back to early nineteenth-century historians such as Ranke) and also conceptually (grappling with the probabilistic nature of inferences about the past). He also identifies parallel developments in other disciplines including textual criticism and evolutionary biology. The book reminds me of Ian Hacking's work on the history of probability theory, in that both combine history and conceptual analysis in a fruitful way.' Elliott Sober, Stanford University