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History and the Brewmaster's Nose
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
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?
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- Copyright © The Authors 1985
References
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2 Page numbers noted parenthetically in the present paper are to the Feigl and Brodbeck reprinting.
3 In what follows, ‘Matthew,’ ‘Mark,’ etc., refer respectively to the several gospels, ‘St. Matthew,’ ‘St. Mark,’ etc., to their authors.
4 Farmer's, W.R. The Synoptic Problem (New York: Macmillan 1964)Google Scholar contains a fascinating history of the debate over the Synoptic Problem.
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13 Ibid.
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19 Dan Hausman, Inge Lembeck, Harper Pryor and the referees of this journal commented helpfully on an earlier draft of this paper. A grant from the University of Maryland also helped.