Historiography: a legitimate research methodology for nursing.

Historical research, a methodology generally accorded scholarly recognition by other disciplines, has yet to achieve full credibility and acceptance within the profession of nursing. This article examines the historical approach and demonstrates that its products constitute legitimate knowledge for nursing. It critically analyzes various extant epistemologies and ontologies that have affected the discipline of nursing, such as logical positivism, the paradigmatic and evolutionary views, and the postempiricist approaches, and ascertains that these belief systems vary greatly in the amount of support that they provide to the historical method of research.