Molte, si sa, sono le definizioni di storia ....

Morton Smith, ad esempio

"History is a work of the imagination within limits set by the imagination. We must try to imagine what actually happened, that is, what accords both with our image of the preserved evidence and with our image of the real word"

(Ascent to Heaven, 47)
 
 

 

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    Può essere utile la lettura di qualche riflessione di Wittgenstein e di Kripke:

"When I make a statement about Moses, – am I always ready to substitute some one of these descriptions for “Moses?”
I shall perhaps say: By “Moses ” I understand the man who did what the Bible relates of Moses,or at any rate a good deal of it.
But how much?
Have I decided how much must be proved false for me to give up my proposition as false?
Has the name “Moses ” got a fixed and unequivocal use for me in all possible cases"

(Ludwig  Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations .3rd ed.Trans G.E.M. Anscombe,  1967 Oxford:Basil Blackwell. Citato in CARROL CLARKSON,"“By any other name ”:Kripke,Derrida and an ethics of naming, JLS 32 (2003),35 –47)

"In fact, Moses might not have done many of the things we commonly associate with him,and in the event that our knowledge about Moses had to undergo serious revision,we would not say that we must have been speaking about someone else all along (the view to which Searle is committed), but that Moses had not done many of the things that we thought he had".

(Saul A.Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 1972 Oxford:Basil Blackwell, Citato in CARROL CLARKSON,"“By any other name ”:Kripke,Derrida and an ethics of naming, JLS 32 (2003), 35 –47)