In this lesson, we’ll be looking at the epistemological problem that results from the stories historians write about the past that they call history. Among the hightlights will be me drawing pictures of chairs, explaining why facts are like fish, and using my favourite definition of history as the ‘plausible plastered over the forgotten.’

‘We won’t understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was; it cannot be reconstructed.’ Milan Kundera

History has three epistemological problems. As we saw in the previous two films, the first epistemological weakness of history is concerned with the fact history can only make sense of the past through the very limited sources the past has left behind. The second weakness is concerned with how the historian heavily influences how those limited sources are ‘discovered’ and prioritised:. In this lesson we will examine the final epistemological weakness which is concerned with how the historian produces the text of history. The historical text is so much more than the mere arrangement and ordering of facts. History is also a work of literature.