The focus on the narrative aspects of the writing of history since the 1970s has reinforced constructivist and pluralist assumptions about historiography. Narrativization and narrative features in texts have typically been understood as being dependent on the subject-side, and thus, on the narrator and her culture. Assuming then that narrativity is an essential feature of historical presentation, the conclusion that seems to follow is that there cannot be only one objectively correct narrativization of the past. Instead, there are many possible (literary) worlds of history. But are there other reasons to favor pluralism with respect to the worlds of history? By contrast, it is often thought that the sciences gradually reveal the secrets of nature and debunk our errors and myths. This form of progress has of course been questioned by Kuhn and other historical philosophers in particular but still captures the imagination of many. Could the past be approached in a similar way? That is, could we think that painstaking study reveals the shape of the real past, which could perhaps also function as a guide to the future? Further, if we think that historical explanations are causal, citing causes and effects of phenomena, does this add force to realism in historiography? Is it conceivable that there is something like one correct and describable causal structure in the past? And can we get to the one true account of the past? The papers of this issue are united by their concern with the form and philosophical bearing of historical knowledge. Specifically, they discuss narrativity, causality and plurality of historical (re)presentations. Bruce S. Bennett and Moletlanyi Tshipa argue most explicitly for the plurality of historical worlds. Their application of the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI), borrowed from physics, strikingly states that all possible histories exist. It may be the case that we, in fact, inhabit a less probable world. The authors also suggest that MWI can help us to think about causation in history. Georg Gangl likewise studies the nature of causality in his research paper. Gangl argues that historiography shares the same form of explanation, causal narrative explanation, as other historical sciences, such as evolutionary biology and paleontology. According to Gangl, “historians track with their narratives ... ‘causal networks’ that spread through time,” which seems to take us beyond the historian-narrator’s world to the real mechanisms of the past. Yet,

中文翻译：

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社论：有多少个历史世界？

自 1970 年代以来，对历史写作的叙事方面的关注加强了关于历史学的建构主义和多元主义假设。文本中的叙事化和叙事特征通常被理解为依赖于主体，因此依赖于叙述者和她的文化。假设叙述性是历史呈现的一个基本特征，那么似乎可以得出的结论是，不能只有一种客观正确的对过去的叙述。相反，有许多可能的（文学）历史世界。但是，关于历史世界，还有其他理由支持多元主义吗？相比之下，人们通常认为科学逐渐揭示了自然的秘密，揭穿了我们的错误和神话。这种进步形式当然受到了库恩和其他历史哲学家的特别质疑，但仍然吸引了许多人的想象力。可以以类似的方式处理过去吗？也就是说，我们是否可以认为艰苦的研究揭示了真实过去的形状，这也许也可以作为未来的指南？此外，如果我们认为历史解释是因果的，引用现象的因果关系，这是否会增加史学中的现实主义的力量？是否可以想象，过去存在某种正确且可描述的因果结构？我们能找到对过去的真实描述吗？这个问题的论文是由他们对历史知识的形式和哲学意义的关注而联合起来的。具体来说，他们讨论叙事性，历史（重新）呈现的因果关系和多元性。Bruce S. Bennett 和 Moletlanyi Tshipa 最明确地主张历史世界的多元化。他们从物理学中借用的多世界解释（MWI）的应用，惊人地表明所有可能的历史都存在。事实上，我们可能生活在一个不太可能的世界。作者还建议，MWI 可以帮助我们思考历史上的因果关系。Georg Gangl 在他的研究论文中同样研究了因果关系的本质。Gangl 认为，史学与进化生物学和古生物学等其他历史科学具有相同的解释形式，即因果叙事解释。根据 Gangl 的说法，“历史学家通过他们的叙述来追踪……‘因果网络’随着时间的推移而传播，”这似乎使我们超越了历史学家-叙述者的世界，进入了过去的真实机制。然而，