Abstract
The thesis of historical constructionism that the past is constructed by the perspective of the present has impacted historical positivism, which predicates itself on the validity of historical narratives. The questions raised in the fields of cultural studies, postcolonialism, and feminism, such as “How should we evaluate oral history?” “Are all discourses on collective memories political ?” and “How does the narrator's position affect the contents described ?” bear a close relationship to the constructionist approach. It can be said that we cannot write history without the constructionist perspective.
However, we should not conclude that historical positivism is replaced by constructionism because of the former's theoretical inferiority. We had better reconsider that there were elaborate theorization of historical methodology before the emergence of historical constructionism. In this paper, I try to clarify the significance of some traditional issues (such as causality in history and the assumption of rationality) that are hardly discussed in the field of historical constructionism by focusing on Weber and Popper's methodological writings.
