11-06-2007, 09:18 PM
Einstein over his desk in Princeton had a sign with the words
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
For those of you that are not english speakers, the word "count" does NOT literally mean "1, 2, 3..."
Although I enjoy and greatly value History, and feel that studying it we learn much about the past and might be able to comprehend things of the present and glimpse at things to come, I do NOT consider it a science in the same way any of the hard sciences such as physics, chemistry, biochemistry are... and not even like biology and the much more softer psychology.
Modern science moves on two legs, experiment and theory. Niether leg is more important than the other. There are moments when one leg is propels science forward while the other lags behind, then the later outstrips the former and the cycle repeats.
History is not scientific because there is no experimentation. The best a historical theory can do is to say that if one looks at certain facts in a new way then new meaning can be given to them and to other facts previoulsy unexplained. Maybe one might predict that certain types of evidence might turn up if one looks in new places. This is wonderful and exciting!
But there is no way to do experiments in the true sense of the word, that is the creation of an artificial situation to see how things evolves. There is no way to be precise enough to make predictions of how events of the future can evolve and certainly no way to run the movie backwards to see how things would have gone in the past had certain things be different.
As there is no tight way of confirming or trashing competing theories, these remain vague enough to survive most challenges and most die out gradually because the outlook of historians change gradually more from changes in ideology or fashion than from solid evidence. True ideologies and fashions are to be found in science too as scientists are all humans and humans can be swayed and blinded by ideology and fashions. But in history it is rare a beautiful theory be killed by an ugly fact. This instead happens everyday in science and the ideologies and fashions get rapidy swept away once word gets out that solid contrasty evidence has been found.
This is, of course, my opinion. I've thought about many times and feel that ultimately the disagreements are about what we mean by modern science and less by what we mean by History! But the heat of the discussion could be lowered if one realizes that there is nothing wrong with NOT being a science!
History is history is history!? Well Science is something else.
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
For those of you that are not english speakers, the word "count" does NOT literally mean "1, 2, 3..."
Although I enjoy and greatly value History, and feel that studying it we learn much about the past and might be able to comprehend things of the present and glimpse at things to come, I do NOT consider it a science in the same way any of the hard sciences such as physics, chemistry, biochemistry are... and not even like biology and the much more softer psychology.
Modern science moves on two legs, experiment and theory. Niether leg is more important than the other. There are moments when one leg is propels science forward while the other lags behind, then the later outstrips the former and the cycle repeats.
History is not scientific because there is no experimentation. The best a historical theory can do is to say that if one looks at certain facts in a new way then new meaning can be given to them and to other facts previoulsy unexplained. Maybe one might predict that certain types of evidence might turn up if one looks in new places. This is wonderful and exciting!
But there is no way to do experiments in the true sense of the word, that is the creation of an artificial situation to see how things evolves. There is no way to be precise enough to make predictions of how events of the future can evolve and certainly no way to run the movie backwards to see how things would have gone in the past had certain things be different.
As there is no tight way of confirming or trashing competing theories, these remain vague enough to survive most challenges and most die out gradually because the outlook of historians change gradually more from changes in ideology or fashion than from solid evidence. True ideologies and fashions are to be found in science too as scientists are all humans and humans can be swayed and blinded by ideology and fashions. But in history it is rare a beautiful theory be killed by an ugly fact. This instead happens everyday in science and the ideologies and fashions get rapidy swept away once word gets out that solid contrasty evidence has been found.
This is, of course, my opinion. I've thought about many times and feel that ultimately the disagreements are about what we mean by modern science and less by what we mean by History! But the heat of the discussion could be lowered if one realizes that there is nothing wrong with NOT being a science!
History is history is history!? Well Science is something else.
Jeffery Wyss
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
