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History and Science
#31
Quote:History is not a science, in the accepted modern meaning of the term, because it is fundamentally not amenable to experimental proof.

A hypothesis in history can be supported by written or other evidence, but it cannot be proven by it. Written evidence is particularly debatable due to the possiblilty of bias or mendacity in the writer.

So, what is your feeling about linguistics? The entire debate, to my mind, appears to rest on the meaning attributed to the word 'science' which, sadly, is rather more complicated than it looks. I get the impression you favour a very narrow understanding, limited to the pursuit of theoretical understanding of natural phenomena based on inductive reasoning, aided by the copious application of metrology and mathematics, and subject to disproof by experiment. By those lights, history is not a science. BUt even the English word alone encompasses more than this in its prototypical field.

Now, once we cross language barriers or look into the past, things get even more complex. The term 'Wiossenschaft', for example, while once a straightforward rendering of 'scientia', as was 'science', can look back on over a century of divergent development. If I were asked to render it in English, the closest I could come today would be 'academic discipline' and a footnote. I don't know the situation in French and Italian, but suspect it is rather similarly complicated.

As to the placement of anything in any traditional canon of subjects of study, it means very little. German universities do not have an equivalent to 'Arts' or 'Humanities', for example. This is primarily a phenomenon of the English-speaking world. Here, history tends to feature under 'Geisteswissenschaften' or 'Kulturwissenschaften', which (like 'science' to 'Wissenschaft') is close, but not the same thing. And I recall several progressive places in the Anglosphere putting history in with the social, erm, sciences.

Personally, I would not want to use the word science to describe history because of the relative blurriness of its current meaning. But I would also be very careful to say exactly what I mean by that for precisely the same reason.
Der Kessel ist voll Bärks!

Volker Bach
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#32
As several people have already said, I think we need to be more careful here with the word "Science". I realize that in other languages (like Dutch for instance Big Grin ), it is often used to cover a wide number of studies, including History and many other things. This is not at all the case in English. 99.9% of the native English speakers are going to understand you to me something like physics, chemistry, or astronomy if you use that word-- fields of study that are almost entirely empirical.

The problem with history being a science is that while it CAN be empirical, it is by no means a requirement in order for it to be valid. You can't really say the same thing about classic sciences. History can't be totally scientific because it's stuck with the human variable. It's just not possible to be empirical when it comes to people, because the human mind and human actions cannot be quantified or described by a set of rules, nor can they be predicted in any way that always hold true. Given the fact that the doings and goings-on of people is pretty integral to history as a subject, I don't think you can really call it a science.

I am also not quite sure why so many people feel like history is being insulted by saying it's not a science. So what? Why is that bad? Not every useful human endeavor has to be scientific, nor is it somehow made less valid or useful because it can't use that word.
-Christy Beall
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#33
Hi Vorty
you say I am getting things mixed up. Funny! Especially when you mention the chemist with his bottles... Anyway...

That I didn't mention linguistics, archeology, law and even mathematics etc is because I wasn't addressing them. Is astonomy a natural science? A good question. Is mathematics a science? Well I'll let you think about it a little more. Have any mathematician friends? Ask their opinion too. You might be suprised. Is archeology a science?

We all realize that our discussion is regards what we consider science, what we consider the purpose of science. Don't worry be happy. Especially don't get offended if someone questions the scientific nature of your discipline. No reason to get uptight. Evidently there is disagreement on the meaning and use of the word "science". I admire the work of linguists, historians and adore mathematicians even though I think they do NOT have a clue of what experimentation is all about. Astronomers do as they have to rely on instruments that need to profoundly understood to be reliable and calibrated. That goes for archeologists when they have to rely on high tech tools (radioactive dating, radar, ...).

I think I could manage with patience to the give to a linguist and historian the flavor of what it means to experiment and calibrate. They would recongize the issue of questioning the reliability of the sources. But for them I fear it would be just a metaphor. Ok some sources are unreliable more than others, but no source is unbiased and complete. How do to keep track of the uncertainties? Natural sciences do that everyday, so much so that an observation, be it passive or active, is useless if it is not accompanied by an assessment of the uncertainties. The issue of assessing uncertainities might be recongized by a linguist or historian as they too need to cross-examine the sources and to build a good case, an argument, in favor of some thesis. This idea of building a case using logic and a judicious use of "evidence" is as old as argumentations are and dates to the greeks. They quickly learned to recongize good logic ("All men are mortal, socrates is a man, socrates is mortal") from bad logic ("God is love, love is blind, Ray Charles is blind, Ray Charles is God"). But then the issue of what is a "judicious" choice of evidence remains. In natural science there is more to just framing good arguements or telling a good myth. In natural science the last call comes from experimental verification. For a natural scientist it is the very essence of understanding nature, the true goal of natural science. If I look through a tube full of pieces of stranglely shaped pieces of glass and see something, is that something real or an artifact of the piece of glass? Again an historian might appreciate the metaphor but I ask whether he grasps the essence because natural science, although a social construct (duh...), REALLY does have much to say about the REAL world out there.

anyway...
Jeffery Wyss
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
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#34
Quote:A hypothesis in history can be supported by written or other evidence, but it cannot be proven by it. Written evidence is particularly debatable due to the possiblilty of bias or mendacity in the writer.

Martin,

You haven't read a single word I wrote about what History entails. or you have ignored it.

Anyway, History is not about hypotheses about the past. Nor has it only to do with judging the value of written evidence.
Robert Vermaat
MODERATOR
FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)
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#35
Quote:I am also not quite sure why so many people feel like history is being insulted by saying it's not a science. So what? Why is that bad? Not every useful human endeavor has to be scientific, nor is it somehow made less valid or useful because it can't use that word.
Well said.

I get the distinct impression nobody bothered to click on the link to a description of 'scientific method'. :wink: I also notice that it was the scientist who bothered to comment on the historical theory I put, and ironically none of the historians Big Grin

'Experimental archaeology'; is that one field of archaeology and even history that has a scientific method?
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!
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#36
Quote: As several people have already said, I think we need to be more careful here with the word "Science". I realize that in other languages (like Dutch for instance Big Grin ), it is often used to cover a wide number of studies, including History and many other things. This is not at all the case in English. 99.9% of the native English speakers are going to understand you to me something like physics, chemistry, or astronomy if you use that word-- fields of study that are almost entirely empirical.
I second that.
How do you judge astronomy to be emperical? Isn't physics about theories mostly, too?

Quote: The problem with history being a science is that while it CAN be empirical, it is by no means a requirement in order for it to be valid. You can't really say the same thing about classic sciences. History can't be totally scientific because it's stuck with the human variable. It's just not possible to be empirical when it comes to people, because the human mind and human actions cannot be quantified or described by a set of rules, nor can they be predicted in any way that always hold true. Given the fact that the doings and goings-on of people is pretty integral to history as a subject, I don't think you can really call it a science.
Same with Sociology, Psychology, Medicine, anything that has to do with people. Are those not Science either?

Like I keep saying, too many people here misunderstand what History entails, and concetrate far too much on the 'hypotheses about the past' part. Yes, historians sometimes write articles and books about the past. But that, I'll keep repeating ad nauseam, is not what History is about. It's the methodology that counts - without that, it's not History but just personal opinion. See below.

Quote: I am also not quite sure why so many people feel like history is being insulted by saying it's not a science. So what? Why is that bad? Not every useful human endeavor has to be scientific, nor is it somehow made less valid or useful because it can't use that word.
No, but what is the consequence for me personally? That I'm not a scientist? That my years at university were an utter waste of time because I could have taken a course in basket weaving instead? History has to do with people - so? Does that mean that historians work unscientifically and can be looked down upon condescendically by 'real' scientists who shake their head at us in a pitying manner?

Yeah, I'm overdoing it, I know. But I think all of this is coming from a pretty elitist way to interpret the word 'science'.

One of the reasons I'm very touchy about this is the confrontation with far too many people who think they can do a 'Dan Brown' and write a history book themselves. They disregard all source criticism and disregard all methodology even more. Like I said, then you get nutters who claim Julius Caesar stood model for Jesus Christ. This claim of history being not a science does not help.
Robert Vermaat
MODERATOR
FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)
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#37
Maybe all the historians out there didn't make much of a fuss is because they weren't touched by the statement that history was not a science as they did not feel threatened or diminished :roll: .

That I, a practicing physcist, think what I think is because I have more than an idea of what physics and natural sciences are about. As a lover and reader of history and appreciator of historians I like to think I have an idea of what historians do. I entered this thread because someone else started it and also because it has popped up before, not because I wished to throw a stone and see the waves it would make.
Jeffery Wyss
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
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#38
I hope you relate to these quotes on natural science. They might stress the similarities with what you do in life.

Here is a nice quote by Henri Poincare'
"Science is made of facts like a house is made of bricks. But a pile of bricks is no more a house than a bunch of facts is a science."

here is one by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (nobel medicine 1937)
"Research is to see what everyone else has seen but to think what no one else has thought."

here is one by Richard Feynman
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.â€
Jeffery Wyss
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
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#39
Quote:
Urselius:23jsqgeu Wrote:A hypothesis in history can be supported by written or other evidence, but it cannot be proven by it. Written evidence is particularly debatable due to the possiblilty of bias or mendacity in the writer.

Martin,

You haven't read a single word I wrote about what History entails. or you have ignored it.

Anyway, History is not about hypotheses about the past. Nor has it only to do with judging the value of written evidence.

I read what you wrote, I don't think I ignored it, I also don't see its relevance to my comment about proof by experiment.

You said that History is written through the synthesis of information from many sources, epigraphic, dendrochronological etc., etc. - I'm correct in this interpretation, am I? I agree wholeheartedly, but even with non-literary evidence conclusions about what people did in the past are still not provable in the manner that a biological or chemical hypothesis can be proven.

Just because I don't think History is a science does not mean that I consider that it does not posess intellectual rigour or validity, or even that I think it has less intellectual rigour than a science.

Surely History is at least in part about hypotheses about the nature of past events. I can think of one such situation off the top of my head. The Anglicisation of lowland Britain is interpreted as either the result of a mass migration of people from northern Germany or about the disproportionate influence of a few boatloads of German pirates on a land in social and political meltdown. These sound suspiciously like two competing hypotheses to me.
Martin

Fac me cocleario vomere!
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#40
Please re-read Einstein's quote
"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

Theories aren't proved by any number of experiments. They can be DISPROVED by just one. A theory thay passes a finite number of experiments isn't proved for there is no guarantee that the theory will fail the next experiment. So all we think we know about the universe is plausible but not proved, certainly it is not proved the way a math theorem can be proved true. But to think that all we know is unfounded and downright false is irrational. Indeed I suggest you now reread Feynman quote
"UFOs are better explained in terms of the known irrationalities of terrestrial beings rather than by any unknown rationalities of extraterrestrial beings."
Jeffery Wyss
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
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#41
Quote:Please re-read Einstein's quote
"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

Theories aren't proved by any number of experiments. They can be DISPROVED by just one. A theory thay passes a finite number of experiments isn't proved for there is no guarantee that the theory will fail the next experiment. So all we think we know about the universe is plausible but not proved, certainly it is not proved the way a math theorem can be proved true. But to think that all we know is unfounded and downright false is irrational. Indeed I suggest you now reread Feynman quote
"UFOs are better explained in terms of the known irrationalities of terrestrial beings rather than by any unknown rationalities of extraterrestrial beings."

Three is the smallest statistically valid number of results. Try applying a Chi squared test to Bede :wink:
Martin

Fac me cocleario vomere!
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#42
Quote:I get the distinct impression nobody bothered to click on the link to a description of 'scientific method'. Wink I also notice that it was the scientist who bothered to comment on the historical theory I put, and ironically none of the historians Very Happy

hehee. I actually (eventually) did go read the wikipedia pages on "science", "humanities", "soft science", "history" and "empirical" because I felt like I needed to understand the terms a bit better myself. Ok, no substitute for "real" research, but better than nothing. :lol:

Quote:How do you judge astronomy to be emperical? Isn't physics about theories mostly, too?

I think that's something that scientists in any of the highly theoretical fields struggle with every single day -- it is hard to directly prove a lot of those things. Nobody can visit a black hole of course! What astronomers CAN do in such cases is come up with a hypothesis, predict a certain set of behaviors that would hold true if their hypothesis is correct, and then test to see if it works. It won't prove things absolutely, but they've just created observable repeatable tests that support their conclusion. The more different kinds of tests that can be done to point to the same conclusion, the more sound the theory is considered.

Just because science contains theories doesn't make it any less empirical. To quote wikipedia on the subject:
Quote:In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it can in everyday speech. A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from or is supported by experimental evidence. In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations which is predictive, logical and testable. As such, scientific theories are essentially the equivalent of what everyday speech refers to as facts.

Something has to be pretty well tested in science even to reach the status of "theory". If I recall correctly even Newton's famous statements about gravity are still technically considered "theories", even though nearly everyone now accepts gravity as a physical truth. The only real "fact" according to science is that you can observe what appears to be something falling towards the ground!"

Quote:Same with Sociology, Psychology, Medicine, anything that has to do with people. Are those not Science either?
I guess I should have been more clear before. It's true, these subjects are about studying people, but I'd say they tend to focus on the testable, experimentable aspects. You probably won't find them going around trying to figure out why one specific person thought the way they did or chose to do things that they did, because one person is not enough to make a good test, nor enough to really reveal any larger truth about people in general.
Some historians do this too, but there are also countless very famous historians who have made their life's work studying just one person and trying to understand their life and why they did what they did. This doesn't make them less of a good historian, but I wouldn't say their work follows a "traditional" scientific methodology.

Quote:One of the reasons I'm very touchy about this is the confrontation with far too many people who think they can do a 'Dan Brown' and write a history book themselves. They disregard all source criticism and disregard all methodology even more. Like I said, then you get nutters who claim Julius Caesar stood model for Jesus Christ. This claim of history being not a science does not help.
Probably just how scientists feel when guys go around claiming they can prove UFO's exist, or that their are ghosts, or that people have telepathic abilities. These people usually claim that they can "scientifically" test these claims, but generally they too have no regard for real scientific methodology, and tend pick and choose facts to suit their own ideas. Regardless of your chosen field, there are always going to be idiots out there who make it look stupid, and uneducated people who are taken in by these silly claims.
-Christy Beall
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#43
What Volker wrote above pretty much sums it up. As I said, it mainly seems to be a semantic problem. I don´t see any thing new coming up in this discussion.
In Germany especially people tend to get angry about such statements, since there is a constant withdrawal of funds for the Geisteswissenschaften, since they earn no money. It no longer is a "prestige" subject / field / science here, like it is in America, e.g.
With Historians being permanently under fire to rectify their existence and "usefulness" (i.e. profitability), it might be understandable at least why I had a sort of allergic reaction.

Quote:I get the distinct impression nobody bothered to click on the link to a description of 'scientific method'. I also notice that it was the scientist who bothered to comment on the historical theory I put, and ironically none of the historians

In fact, I wanted to include this link as well in one of my earlier postings - and I did! Look in my first posting in this thread! Smile

I thought about commenting, but I´m runnning out of time. When I´m back from Nijmegen, maybe. Smile
Christian K.

No reconstruendum => No reconstruction.

Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas.
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#44
Well, despite all this talk of science, it is strange how something that utilizes the advances of science, is called the 'ART" of war, not the science.... :roll:
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
Titus Flavius Germanus
Batavian Coh I
Byron Angel
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#45
Cheer up everyone, it could have been worse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_history
:wink:
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!
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