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Department of History to the Division of Social Sciences derives, ultimately, from some such view of the historian’s labor.)There has always existed a certain skepticism about history’s claims to offer positive knowledge of the past. Such skepticism has usually been founded upon a deep-seated anti-intellectualism or irrationalism, and reflects the suspicion that history is not philosophy teaching by examples, but “an agreed upon fable” (Napoleon), “merely gossip” (Oscar Wilde), or, more provocatively, “a