Abstract

The New Economic History has revived epistemological awareness among historians, and calls into question the positivist evasion of the problems of subjectivity and constructive synthesis. Although historians have resisted science as well as scientism, they cannot give an adequate account of concrete reality without a global theory of society seen as a structured whole. But unlike the scientism of much social science, the historian must discriminate between chance, necessity, and free will; and this is not incompatible with scientific explanation. There remains a difference between economics and history. To the extent that economic models generalize contemporary patterns, the historian of another period must find models appropriate to that period i.e., become an economist of that period