Perhaps most people just assume, without thinking much about it, that whatever happened in the past must have happened independently of our thoughts, theories, and conceptual schemes – and independently of what scientists tell us about prehistory. Indeed, it may seem natural to assume that prehistory is not something scientists make. I have tried to show that this assumption, however natural it may seem, is indefensible. There are no good arguments for it at all: no good a priori arguments, because (contrary to what some philosophers have said) there is nothing absurd or crazy about the idea that the past depends on us. And there are no good a posteriori arguments, because the only arguments that realists have produced (for example, Devitt's basic abductive argument) are quite irrelevant to the question whether anything exists or occurs mind-independently.

In philosophy of science today, the leading alternative to realism is the philosophical view that Bas van Fraassen has called constructive empiricism. In this chapter, I present van Fraassen's view and show how that view might apply to historical science. My aim in doing so is to use constructive empiricism as a foil for helping to understand the natural historical attitude.