Narrative in the Historical Sciences: A Working Interdisciplinary Bibliography

Abstract

Models of scientific explanation derived from the physical sciences are often poorly suited to the historical sciences — to the fields William Whewell called the palaetiological sciences. A listing of 27 titles that explore the nature of narrative understanding across a range of scientific disciplines — from cosmology to paleontology to economics — attests to the importance of narrative epistemology in the sciences.

Keywords: anthropology, cosmology, ecology, economics, epistemology, evolution, evolutionary biology, explanation, historical sciences, history of science, literary theory, narrative, narratology, paleontology, palaetiology, philosophy of science, phylogeny, systematics, tree thinking

JEL Classification: A12, B41, N01