Is history a science?

Do you mean history as it happened or as reported?

No, it is not a science. Science is constructed through experimentation to find facts/truths/laws. History is a process of understanding the past, but is subject to interpretation and each nuanced opinion is subjective.

Science is objective; history is subjective.

History is not a science, and cannot be unless we discover a 4th dimension and a way to access it.
i.e. time travel where historical facts can be recorded, verified and repeated.

(IMO)

The study of history is part of the arts in academia.

There is science in carrying out research to establish basic historic facts but history itself is a narrative and says as much about the narrator as about the events themselves. The essence of history to me is biography and history is never more alive than when personal experiences are recounted.

No

@Jak I mean history as a field of study.

@All – it cannot be just art, or there would be no difference with historical fiction.

There’s a very dry side to history such as going through tons of archives to collect statistics or using archeology and paleobiology techniques to study and date stuff.

There’s also an expectation of describing the world as truthfully as possible, something wich is a bit foreign to art, at least modern art. No symphoniy can be simply incorrect. It can be tone deaf but not untrue. But a historical statement can be proven to be incorrect. Eg negationism.

So it’s not so simple, in my opinion.

@Zenvelo
Astronomy and paleanthology are clearly sciences and yet you can’t experiment with a dino or a dwarf star in a lab, in a replicable way. Both of these sciences can only observe the past, like history.

@olivier5 Oh, I guess you are right! See! Fluther is science, since you proved me wrong!

Except Astronomy is replica table by applying theory to repeated measuring tests to validate a supposition. One can observe characteristics of a dwarf star. Same with paleontology.

History is science but it’s not a hard science. I would say it’s marginally science….barely. Things that people call “science” like sociology clearly are not because of the intrinsic subjectiveness. History has a large component of this. When stronger sciences can back it up and people are willing to accept new facts as they are unearthed it becomes less subjective and more credible.

History is an academic art that is supplemented by science when possible.

A good example of what I mean is the Shroud of Turin. Historical studies show it was believed the Shroud was the real, actual shroud of Jesus.

Scientific tests proved the linen far too young to have existed during biblical times.

@flutherother yes, there is definitely a part of history that is about story telling, and a part which is about fact gathering, more scientific therefore. I’m more interested in the interplay and trade offs between the two than in pigeon holing history into one of these broad categories.

For instance, there can be too much art and too little knowledge in some historical thesis that would be beautifully written but too subjective and creative. Too far from facts, too dramatized.

The opposite can also be true, me think: some historians are too factual and dry, and do not tell a story.

@zenvelo Hahaha. The falsifiability criteria does not apply to the place where the refutation happens. If you proved me wrong in the street, it would not mean the street is a science…

What you describe is called a quasi-experiment: When a scientist takes advantage of the natural variability in phenomenon X in order to derive some knowledge of it. Quasi-experiments are the next best thing after experimentation, and they are used by sciences which cannot experiment due to ethical or epistemological constraints.

Eg it would be unpracticle and immoral to start a war just to see how it goes, but there are many wars that one can study to derive some general knowledge about wars.

According to Popper, history is a science (defined as a field of knowledge where facts matter a lot) but one without laws. There’s no laws of history except trivial ones, he says. In contrast, astronomy has laws, even if it cannot experiment, and paleanthology has at least a theory: The theory of evolution. What would be the equivalent of something like neo-darwinisn in history? Maybe the sort of universal historical trajectory that Jared Diamond tries to plot in Guns, Germs, and Steel.

@ARE_you_kidding_me
By and large I agree. Thanks for stressing the importance of subjectivity vs objectivity as a criterion for science, and bringing up the case of sociology. This is useful as it points to the classic distinction between natural sciences and social sciences. PaleOnthology used to be called “natural history” as opposed to human history = “history”.

I guess it’s easier to be objective when speaking of dinosaurs than when speaking of our own species. We suffer from some deformed vision or blind spots when we look at ourselves.

@Seek
Not sure about the concept of “academic art supplemented by science”. I think the third option between hard sciences and arts is what is commonly called “social sciences”. So i guess the issue boils down to the status of social sciences in relation to art(s) and science(s).

there is science to Archaeology and that is certainly a study of the past, but history, as it is taught now in schools is most defiantly set squarely in the humanities section of the curriculum. Many stories are told and retold that have been scientifically proven to be false. Most history books are still filled with myths that are told and retold despite current scientific proof.

@cazzie
History can be ideologically manipulated, especially in public education textbooks. That’s true but biology too, eg “intelligent design”.

Biology is based on facts. You are trying to discuss evolutionary biology which has also history in origin, so it ends up being twisted. Humans are horrible at the concept of time. It shows up in their gullibility to be mislead with both quite recent historic events and things that are quite ancient dating back billions of years.

Intelligent design is not biology. Full stop.

Biology certainly does not delve into meaning or philosophy. That’s why it’s a pure science.

@olivier5 Since you knew your answer, why did you ask the question?

And, “According to Popper…” Who are you talking about? Mr. Pooper was wholly fictional, even if he did have some great penguins.

I’m getting really sick of moronic ‘philosophers’ pretending to be useful practicers of anything.

History is a set of stories told by people. It is often said that it is written by the winners. Often, during times of war and unrest, the losers don’t get seem to get a word in edgewise because, well, they’re dead. So, as I said before, there is much empirical data missing in most of the stories spun about what has pasted. History is as subjective as our current political opinions. If humans were better an understanding their history, they would stop repeating it.

I mean… honestly….. people are being killed because they won’t play along. This is the bullshit philosophy, without science, leads to.

@zenvelo
I asked the question because I’m interested in the range of answers rather than in one “good” answer. That’s the purpose of the social section, no? It’s a complex issue me think, which a debate can help explore. I said so already in the question sub-text.

Karl Popper studied what he called “historicism” (the theories according to which history follows predetermined laws and pathes – eg Marxism) quite a lot. He is very critical of them, as you might know. He is also the author of a well-known test for scientific statements: falsifiability. A test which history passes: good historical statements are falsifiable. He is relevant to this thread.

Now if quotes from good philosophers are frown upon here… bummer!

@Cazzie

”History is as subjective as our current political opinions. If humans were better an understanding their history, they would stop repeating it.”

Not exactly as subjective. There are objective facts in history. Or more precisely, there are historical statements that are demonstrably not true. Eg negationism or the statement that the south won the US civil war.

Yet the fall out continues to take lives due to the lack of facing the issues.

@cazzie The fall out??

Well, people have only just worked out that flying the Confederate flag is somewhat anti.American. And the laws on the books that were immediately passed after the war to disenfranchise the ex-slaves and the institutional racism that still exists, you know, that kind of thing.

Ok, the fall out from the civil war. Got you.
The point of history, all along since its birth in antiquity, has been to learn from past mistakes. IOW it’s always been political and therefore always tainted by the political motives of those writing it. The political subjectivity of historians is the price to pay for history’s political relevance, if that makes sense.
Said differently, history could only be done objectively if it was totally irrelevant to today’s world.

As @cazzie said, archaeology is a science, so if you go far back enough in time then history becomes science. Perhaps what matters is the perspective by which it is viewed. If you just look at history from a journalistic point of view then it is not science. You could look at history from not only an archaeological but from sociological or biological perspectives.

That’s a neat point, olivier5. History could only be done objectively if it was totally irrelevant to today’s world. I guess that is why we can look at the history of the ancient Phoneticians with detached awe, but looking at the historical remnants of WW2 internment camps brings us to tears. To learn from our past, though, means it does have relevance, so I think when writing or teaching it, it falls more into the humanities. It is about facts and dates and events, but if we are to truly learn from those events that happened around those people, on those dates, we need to learn about their human motivations and the politics of the day.

Thanks! Yes, it would explain why ancient history is less “loaded” and considered more scientific (the case of archeology). Another factor is perhaps that archeology is based on artifacts, while history is often based on a critical analysis of texts, something inherently difficult and yes, literary in nature rather than scientific. Hence the classic category of “humanities”, which works but is a bit of a loose bag.

J B Bury (an historian) said “History is a science, nothing more and nothing less.” He was full of horsie poop. History (as a discipline) is not testable, it is not falsifiable, and the data are never (or almost never) certain. In many respects, historical accounts are a big game of telephone.

@Setanta well said.

Thanks, Boss.

@Setanta
The problem in considering history as an art (or as “something else than science”) is that it opens the door to revisionism. There are historical FACTS. History is NOT about fantasy and aesthetical preferences. It’s about FACTS, and facts are the stuff of science.

@olivier5 History is not facts, it is determining the relationship between facts and circumstances and beliefs.

History is continually revised. History is not merely “atom bombs fell onHiroshima and Nagasaki”, but was it necessary? could an alternative have happened?

^ it makes no difference: Facts and causal relations etween facts are exactly what science is about. And science too is continually revised.

The heart of the problem is that one can often not determine what claims about history are factual. Furthermore, popular beliefs about history are immune to allegations of fact. The continuing popularity of the FDR-Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories is a prime example of this problem. This can be seen in science, as for example in the assault on evolution by religious fanatics or the assault on climate change by self-interested parties, or more likely, the dupes of self-interested parties. Those cases, however, are amenable to discussions of evidence., to the recitation of facts. That is not always the case with history, when so much data remains unavailable, and what data is available is subject to interpretation, and can often be strenuously denied by those with an agenda..One gentleman i knew on-line (i’ve not seen him for years) who is a practicing historian once observed, cogently, that all history is subject to revision, and all historical accounts which are not primary documents are revisionist. Of course, I would add to that that primary documents very often are not trustworthy themselves.

Science is overrated.
Another human construction that assumes we know all there is to know at the given moment.

In many ways religion is more honest in asking for faith.

Science does NOT assume we know all there is to know at the given moment. On the contrary, science assumes that we can always be wrong about pretty much anything we think we know.

I agree with @olivier5 (is this a first?). Karl Popper’s work on the philosophy of science is now the accepted view. Popper said that what distinguishes science from non-science is that science makes falsifiable statements. In Popper’s view, an experiment is not designed to prove a hypothesis, but rather to test it by trying to show that it is wrong. If the hypothesis cannot be disproved despite your best efforts, then it is tentatively accepted until such time as a different experiment shows that it is invalid.

@LostInParadise It’s probably a first, simply because you and I never discussed anything before. At least not to my knowledge.

I’m a big fan of Karl Popper, and entirely agree with your post. Oops! We did it again…

@Set all history is subject to revision That’s precisely why it is a science. Note that art is not subject to revision. There’s no point in revising, say, Bethoven’s 5th or da Vinci’s Mona Lisa because they don’t pretend to be factual. At best one can re-interpret them.

Your claim is specious. The revision of history does not proceed on the same lines as the naturalistic investigation which characterized science. Music is revised all the time, by the way, having been revised by the original composer, and revised again and again by those who come after.

Don’t address me as “Set,” that’s a familiarity which i prefer to reserve for my friends.

I’ll call you as I want to, Set.

The revision of history does not proceed on the same lines as the naturalistic investigation which characterized science.
Of course it does. Historians, when they discover new facts (eg new documents or new archeological sites), have to revise views that are inconsistant with these new facts, or develop new theories to explain these new facts. Just like paleonthologists may have to revise their theories or expand on them when they discover a new fossile species.

Music is not revised, merely re-interpreted. The previous interpretation does not become “false” or less accurate than the new one… Eg Aretha Franklin’s cover of Eleonor Rigby did NOT supersede the Beatles’ original version in the way that Copernican heliocentrism superseded the geocentric system of Ptolemy.

Art is never true or false, its purpose is not to describe what happened as accurately as possible. Art just aims to produce beauty, and whether one prefers a version or another of the same song is purely a matter of taste. Not so in history, or science.

Yet another internet warrior who argues because he can, and not because he actually has a point .Call me long-distance, and collect, Olive Tree, and see if anyone picks up the charges.

@olivier5 You might be a great scientist, but you are a little week on logic. You are presenting a false dichotomy. History is neither an Art (as an outlet of expression) nor is it a Science (systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment).

It is a field of study in the Humanities. There may be no new facts for years, but a continually new view of the past as History is re-interpreted. But a new interpretation does not supplant a previous view, it just offers an alternative opinion.

To try and say that “History is facts” misses the whole point. History is written by the victor, and rewritten as the tides of cultures change.

@Setanta and yet I am the one proposing detailed arguments, facts and examples here. You are the one who has no argument. Just because you disagree with my point doesn’t make it disappear, and it does not exempt you from trying to provide some argument. Just saying ”it is so because I say so” doesn’t cut it.

The way I see it, this is a discussion, not a war. If you keep up being belligerant, I will report you.

@zenvelo History is neither an Art (as an outlet of expression) nor is it a Science (systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

Is this the only definition of science there is? For what reason does it exclude culture and other social facts? Why can we study scientifically the societies of bees and ants, the local cultures of birds and apes, but not our own?

As a counter-example, archeology studies cultural artifacts and statements, and yet it is generally considered scientific.

The idea that “History is written the winners” is little more than a cliché. Nothing prevent the French from writting on Waterloo, the Brits from writting on the US revolution, or the US from writting about the Vietnam war. The sentence implies a TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF THE LOSERS, which is rarely the case.

Science has an important part to play in the study of history and can help establish the facts without which history is impossible. But the study of history is an activity that requires a human understanding of the facts and that is something science can’t provide. Historians must have insight into the motives and intentions of people and some empathy for the condition of our fellow humans even those of long ago. Science is a part of history but it isn’t all of it, history is far too important and far closer to our hearts than that.

@ flutherother. Despite Olive Tree’s phony protestations of “detailed arguments,” it is precisely because historians use scientific data from genuine scientific disciplines, but do not use the scientific method themselves that history cannot be considered a science. One of the attributes of a genuine scientific theory is prediction. Historians don’t have any real basis for prediction, and if an historian made a prediction which turned out to be true, it would just be dumb luck.

“But the study of history is an activity that requires a human understanding of the facts and that is something science can’t provide.”—as you say, and that is a clue to what history can teach us. It teaches about human nature, which is the only constant in human history. History is not a science because it doesn’t use the scientific method, and in fact, cannot use it. It is the use of human understanding, as you point out, that is the greatest value of historical investigation.

@flutherother Science is a part of history but it isn’t all of it, history is far too important and far closer to our hearts than that.

I think i agree with that, as well as with the rest of your post. It’s only only partly a science, but there’s lots of politics in it too. Plus a good dose of literary critique, in the analysis of documents.