  In “The Propaganda of History,” the final chapter of Black Reconstruction (1935), Du Bois maintains that “scientific” historiography—that is, historiography that “set[s] down” the record of “human action” with “accuracy and faithfulness of detail”—can serve the ends of social reform; it can be used, he writes, “as a measuring rod and guidepost for the future of nations” (Du Bois, 1935, 584). Du Bois’s argument for this claim proceeds through a defense of four theses: 1) that the study of history, so far as it belongs to the science of human action, cannot model itself exclusively on the natural sciences; 2) that accuracy in chronicling and explaining human action requires that the historian rely on the method of interpretive understanding—what Max Weber called Verstehen; 3) that, contra Weber, accurate, empirically sound historiography reports moral knowledge; and 4) that the knowledge of morality and moral responsibility yielded by the scientific study of human history (by accurate historiography) can contribute to social reform, for the philosopher and the prophet can use that knowledge to guide mankind in the solution of social problems (1935, 591).