Foreword

This issue of Varia Historia was organized along the line of research of the post-graduate history department of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) called "Science and Culture in History." The purpose of this line of research is to do the "theory and history of science" and to do so in its own multi-layered way, remaining attentive to the issues and discussions of the theory and methodology of history and historiography. The "history of history," which binds these three aspectsthe theoretical, methodological, and historiographicalis the original tool of every historian. lt is the "history of history" that reconstructs and problematizes experience already consolidated and examines the horizon of possible investigations. On its studies depend the depth and innovating force of the historical research of the present. This issue furnishes a dossier in this area of the "history of history," in the fields of theory of history and historiography, offering three interesting articles on present possibilities and the limits of historical science. The article "Contemporary Historiographyan Essay on Comparative Typology," by Estevão de Rezende Martins (UNB), argues that historiography constitutes a decisive factor for historical culture. lts meaning is to furnish the "environment" in which the rational human agent develops his own temporal identity, within the social context in which his self-determining praxis operates. Combining the sense of time and of the past in the traditional, exemplary, criticai, and genetic forms of historiography, according to the Jorn Rüssen's thought, the author develops his essay on the typology of historiography. The article "In Search of a Concept of HistoriographyElements for a Discussion," by Jurandir Malerba, currently Visiting Professor at the Center of Brazilian Studies of Oxford University, starts from some verifiable definitions in recent Brazilian criticism, attempting to contribute to the construction of an operational concept of historiography. Based on the old characterization of past-reality-history and present-knowledge-history, he tries to suggest the potentialities of historiography as an object of the knowledge of human societies. The article "The Logical Specific ity of History," by José Carlos Reis