The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Philosophy of the Historical Sciences and Big History

by Aviezer Tucker (Editor), David Cernín (Editor)

Overview

This handbook examines the philosophy of the historical sciences and their synthesis in concepts like Big or Deep History. Written by interdisciplinary philosophers, historians, and scientists, it acts as a valuable guide for anybody interested in scientific knowledge of the deep past, Big History, and the philosophy of science.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Philosophy of the Historical Sciences and Big History is the first philosophical reference work to recognize that History is not what it used to be: the historical sciences, Deep History, Big History, and even the history of the Anthropocene have now expanded the scope of historiography beyond that of literate civilizations to cover all scientific inferences about the past, from the Big Bang through the history of the planet and the history of life to the history of humanity. Different views about the scope of History have ontological, epistemic, methodological, explanatory, ethical, and educational reasons and implications. The historical sciences and the knowledge they have generated are founded on theories of knowledge of the past, epistemology of history. The contributions in this book consider whether there are common epistemic properties to all the historical sciences that distinguish them from non-historical or theoretical sciences.

The first part of the handbook examines the recent expansion of the scope of the historical sciences in Big History, natural history, global history, and environmental history, and older broader concepts of history like universal history and philosophy of history. The second part of the handbook addresses the ontology and epistemology of the past, including the basic concepts of the historical sciences such as origins, the end of history, determination and underdetermination, contingency and necessity, historical predictions and counterfactuals, and historical pseudoscience. The third part examines the philosophies of the special historical sciences, historical linguistics, textual criticism, geology, evolutionary biology, systematics, archaeology, cosmology, history of the environment, and most significantly, their integrations and combinations – for example, how genetics, archaeology, and historical linguistics have generated a whole new knowledge of deep human history.

This collection offers an overview of what the philosophy of the historical sciences is and is becoming for students and experts alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350409224
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	08/21/2025
Series:	Bloomsbury Handbooks
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	528
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Aviezer Tucker is the Director of the Centre for the Philosophy of Historiography at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Ostrava in the Czech Republic. His publications include Historiographic Reasoning (2024) and Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography (2004), as well as numerous articles and reviews about the philosophy of historiography and the philosophy of science. He also edited A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography (2009). He taught or held research positions at the Central European University, Palacky University, Columbia University, New York University, Trinity College, Long Island University, the Australian National University, Queens University, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the University of Cologne, the University of Texas in Austin, and Harvard University.

David Cernín is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ostrava, Czech Republic and a member of the university's Centre for the Philosophy of Historiography. He has published on topics including historical realism and anti-realism, intellectual history, and history education. His most recent co-authored book, History Education between Science and Narration (published in Czech as Dejepis mezi vedou a vyprávením), was published in 2023 and partly explored the educational potential of Big History.
David Cernín is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ostrava, Czech Republic and a member of the university's Centre for the Philosophy of Historiography. He has published on topics including historical realism and anti-realism, intellectual history, and history education. His most recent co-authored book, History Education between Science and Narration (published in Czech as Dejepis mezi vedou a vyprávením), was published in 2023 and partly explored the educational potential of Big History.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction – History is not What it Used to Be, Aviezer Tucker and Davd Cernín, both University of Ostrava, Czechia
Part One: The scopes of History and historiography
Philosophy of Big History, David Cernín, University of Ostrava, Czechia
Big History – history, science, or 'other'?, Brian Villmoare, University of Nevada, USA
Natural History, James W. McAllister, University of Leiden, the Netherlands
More-than-Human History, Marek Tamm, Tallinn University, Estonia and Zoltán Boldizsár Simon, Bielefeld University, Germany
Epistemic and Ontological Divide between Human History and Prehistory, David Cernín, University of Ostrava, Czechia
Global History in Historiography, Q. Edward Wang, Rowan University, USA
Universal History, Georg Gangl, University of Ostrava, Czechia
The Necessity of Speculation: A Comparison of Big History&Speculative Philosophy of History, Naif Al Bidh, University of Keele, UK
Part Two: Ontology and Epistemology of History
The Ontology of the Past, Adam Timmins, University of Ostrava, Czechia
The Originary Sciences, Aviezer Tucker, University of Ostrava, Czechia
Historical Necessity vs. Contingency, Alexander Maar, State University of Amapá, Brazil
Determination, overdetermination, and underdetermination in the historical sciences, Efraim Wallach, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Prediction and Testing in Historical Natural Science, Thomas Rossetter, Durham University, UK
Counterfactuals, Alexander Maar, State University of Amapá, Brazil
The End of History: Bang, or Whimper?, Matthew Slaboch, Arizona State University, USA
Deep Time in Pseudoscience and Pseudo-History, Ronald H. Fritze, Athens State University, USA
Part Three: The philosophies of the Special Historical Sciences
On the Synthesis of Historical Linguistics and Cognate Disciplines, Frank Cabrera, University of Arkansas, USA
Textual Criticism, Ronald Hendel, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Geology: The Philosophy of Geology as History of This and Other Worlds, Daniel Swaim, Marquette University, USA
Evolutionary Biology, David C. Krakauer and Douglas Erwin, both Santa Fe Institute, USA
Systematics: Inference of the Biological Past, Kirk Fitzhugh, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, USA
Philosophy of Archaeology, Dinçer Çevik, Mugla Sitki Koçman University, Turkey
Astronomy, Cosmology, and the Distant Past, Jamee Elder, Tufts University, USA
The First Three Minutes: Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Particle Physics, Siyu Yao, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
The Philosophy and Theory of Environmental History, Esa Ruuskanen and Kari Väyrynen, both University of Oulu, Finland
Bibliography
Index