Originally Posted by Vorkosigan

If you adopt Doherty's definition, then it is obviously falsifiable in the narrow Popperian terms you propose. A discovery of a manuscript of Josephus with an intact TF datable from the second century would do grave damage to it. So would a gospel that contained a dry historical account rather than accounts invented out of the Old Testament. So would the discovery of a previously unknown account from a historian or similar with narrated the historical kernel that Historicists have invented. But frankly I have little fear of any such thing happening.

But I don't think your approach is correct. Do historical claims have a null hypothesis in that kind of naive Popperian sense that you appear to mean? Don't think so. Interpretive frameworks don't have null hypotheses. They are viewed in terms of their ability to persuade others that they provide a more robust explanation of historical data than other frameworks and can only be similarly refuted. What is the Null Hypothesis for "the South lost the Civil War due to the low quality of its military leadership in the west". What is the Null Hypothesis for "China failed to develop western-style science because did not have Christianity?" There aren't any. The only way to approach the question would be to gather up the data and see what kind of interpretive framework explained the data in a way that satisfied reasonable minds. But then we get into the messy process of social agreement over just what the framework and its interpretation are, as well as what it explains and whether it explains it well. That is what we are doing in the HJ/MJ debate.

Vorkosigan

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

If you read Free Republic and then read Democratic Underground, you will find two radically different Barack Obamas being discussed. Does that mean that Barack Obama does not exist?

Originally Posted by steve_bnk

Science and religion are really two differenr human areas excpet where religion makes specific claims to objective reality such as young Earth creationism.

Originally Posted by Juststeve

Let's do a thought experiment. Suppose we had no evidence that a City named London apart from seven novels, written by seven different authors which were each set in a city called Landon on the river Thames where there was a big clock called Ben. Notwithstanding the fact that novels are by definition fiction I would consider the repetition of the city of London to be evidence that a city of that name exists or did exist. Wouldn't you?