Abstract

A good historian often can assess the relative likelihood of competing historical claims more reliably on implicit grounds - intuitively, if you like - than in any other available way. This idea has been a persistent theme of Verstehen-theorists. It is, in essence, the old saw that there is no substitute for the brewmaster's nose, adapted to the art of producing historical brew. If true, it augments the importance of the historian relative to that of his arguments, and thereby gives him a dignity that he might otherwise lack. And some have thought that it marks an important methodological difference between historical studies and the natural sciences. It is, in its way, a humane idea. But is it true?