The term history, I believe, entails an ambiguity,
in that we use it to designate
both the description of past events
and those events themselves.
When we say "history", at times we mean
the telling of the story of events
but at other times we mean those events themselves.
The context usually indicates our meaning.
When we say for example,
"The history of Boston in the nineteenth
century is replete with numerous severe snowstorms
which paralysed traffic," we intend to report on the
severe storms and the paralysed traffic as distinct
from the techniques and instruments and chronicles by
means of which these storms and their attending paralyses
were recorded and distinct also from the algorithms
by which the raw data were interpreted.
.PP
This ambiguity of the term "history" is projected upon
the term "philosophy of history". "Philosophy of history"
is sometimes meant to refer to explanations and theoretical
elaborations (such as Marxist ideology)
of historical events, but it may also 
refer to an analysis of the process of historiography itself.
The philosophy of history in the first sense asks:
"What is the meaning of the Fall of Rome?"
The philosophy of history in the second sense asks:
"What does it mean to say that Rome fell."
In this second sense one may parody the questions
posed by Kant and ask: 
"Wie ist reine Geschichtswissenschaft moeglich?"
How is the knowledge of history possible?
.PP
To explore this question and its possible answers was
what I naively assumed to be the intent of this discussion list.
Now that I have learned otherwise, I raise the question
"How is the knowledge of history possible?"
not in order to impose my own preoccupations on the group
but simply to inquire whether anyone shares them with me.