Is History an art or a science?

@farmerman,

Indeed, careful observation, including observation oriented by theory, is possible in paleontology. To me that fact (and rationality) is enough to make paleontology a science, even though it cannot conduct controlled experiments.

Same applies to history or astronomy: a historical hypothesis can be testable by way of careful observation. My cousin is a professional historian. He has spent months collecting data from various Mediterranean harbors archives about sea trade in the middle ages. He concluded that the reason why European ships and merchants took over most of the Mediterranean trade in the late middle ages was that Barcelona, Venice or Genoa had in place strong pro-business practices and rightly saw commerce as strategic, while in Northern Africa or Turkey, the local merchants tended to be taxed too heavily and not supported strategically by rulers.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

-- the presence or absence of phlogiston in a substance explains combustion

I would weigh the material pre-combustion and post-combustion. Since phlogiston theory stated that phlogiston is present in metals pre-combustion and evaporates during combustion, the fact that the combusted metal is heavier refutes phlogiston theory.

joefromchicago wrote:

-- George W. Bush was the greatest US president in history

I admit that this is statement is unfalsifiable and unscientific. But would historians consider it a valid statement of putative historic fact or theory? I suspect not.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

Isolated scientific facts don't constitute science, just as isolated historical facts don't constitute history.

When geographers draw their maps, all they ever do is compile isolated facts --- where which river flows, how hot the climate is in which city, etc. Are you calling geography a non-science? If not, how is it more scientific than history?

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On Popper's attitude to social sciences:

Quote:

Popper is a staunch believer in the possibility of the theoretical social sciences, that is, in explanatory, empirically testable hypotheses about society. He acknowledges that there are difficulties with experiment, novelty, complexity, interests, and quantification, but these go to theory not method. […]

As for other suggestions about the differences between the natural and the social sciences, Popper's general position seems to be that there is a tendency to exaggerate difficulties into impossibilities. Certainly there are all sorts of differences involved in solving problems concerning our fellow human beings that are not involved in solving problems concerning nature in general. But: (a) often enough parallels are missed where they exist; (b) in the domain of the natural sciences, from the study of life at the macro level through to the study of inanimate matter at the micro level, most of the special difficulties involved in studying human beings are simulated; and (c) for every advantage physics has against the social sciences, an argument can be made for an advantage the social sciences have over physics. In particular, Popper argues, people's rationality makes it easier for us to understand why we behave the way we do than to understand why atoms and particles behave the way they do. By this reckoning, social science is on the whole easier than natural science.

Essays on the Philosophy of Karl Popper on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday, by C. Jarvie
http://www.the-rathouse.com/Jarvie_on_The_Poverty_of_Historicism.pdf

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@Thomas,

Quote:

I admit that this is statement is unfalsifiable and unscientific. But would historians consider it a valid statement of putative historic fact or theory? I suspect not.

Similarly, plenty of unscientific, unfalsifiable statements can be made in astronomy or physics. E.g. on the existence of other universes, or to paraphrase Joe: "Andromeda is the best galaxy ever"... But this does not mean physics or astronomy cannot be sciences...

It is a fallacy to confuse the discipline of history or astronomy with any particular thesis or statement that can be made in that general domain of study.

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So...what have we decided?

Is history science...or not?

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Because there should be a good reason for excluding all non-experimental evidence from science, as you propose...

When did I propose that?

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@joefromchicago,

In your first post on this thread:

Quote:

Falsification, which Popper took to be the sine qua non of science, involves conducting experiments independently and coming up with the same results.

This defines science as necessarily experimental, but 1) Popper never said that; and 2) why would non-experimental data be less important or 'scientific' than experimental data?

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

I would weigh the material pre-combustion and post-combustion. Since phlogiston theory stated that phlogiston is present in metals pre-combustion and evaporates during combustion, the fact that the combusted metal is heavier refutes phlogiston theory.

Quite right. Lavoisier would be proud.

Thomas wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:
-- George W. Bush was the greatest US president in history

I admit that this is statement is unfalsifiable and unscientific. But would historians consider it a valid statement of putative historic fact or theory? I suspect not.

On the contrary, that's the sort of claim that historians make all the time. More than that, that's the sort of claim that is history. Boiled down to its essentials, history is a story of what was significant and what wasn't. If the historian doesn't make that distinction, then the fact that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and the fact that Lincoln liked his eggs scrambled would have the same weight.

History, in other words, is different from a bare recitation of facts because the historian determines what's significant and what's merely trivia. A historian's claim that George W. Bush is America's greatest president, then, is just another way of saying "George W. Bush was more significant than any other president." That's the stuff of history.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

When geographers draw their maps, all they ever do is compile isolated facts --- where which river flows, how hot the climate is in which city, etc. Are you calling geography a non-science? If not, how is it more scientific than history?

Geographers don't draw maps. Cartographers do. That's why geography can be a science whereas cartography is more of an art.

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@joefromchicago,

From wikipedia:

Quote:

Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography.

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@Frank Apisa,

It's both.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

In your first post on this thread:

Quote:
Falsification, which Popper took to be the sine qua non of science, involves conducting experiments independently and coming up with the same results.

This defines science as necessarily experimental, but 1) Popper never said that; and 2) why would non-experimental data be less important or 'scientific' than experimental data?

So I explicitly note that something is Popper's position, and you immediately claim that it's my position. I don't think that's fair.

For me, science is defined by its adherence to the scientific method. In other words, a practice is scientific to the extent that it follows the scientific method, and is not to the extent that it doesn't. Whether that involves experimental or non-experimental data is a matter of little importance to me, as long as the methods of collecting and analyzing the data conform to the scientific method. And on that basis, history is most assuredly not a science.

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@joefromchicago,

It was not even Popper's position, so if it wasn't yours, it belongs to no one.

Defining "science" as the application of the "scientific method" only helps if you can define the scientific method. Otherwise it's a tautology. I don't think there exists only one scientific method.

Experimentation is certainly not central to, say, astronomy, and therefore experimentation is not a mandatory part of the scientific method. Or do you think astronomy is not a science?

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

It's both.

My wise-acre question was, "Is it a science or not?"

I'll assume you mean it is both an art and a science...not that it both IS a science and NOT a science.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Experimentation is certainly not central to, say, astronomy...

Are you serious?

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@Olivier5,

"experiments" are tests or trials, in the hopes of discovering something . "Controlled experimentation" Is mere methodology. REPEATABLITY is the real desired outcome, wherethe ame data is revealed when sought fter by mny verlapping methods.

I have no religious feelings about history to me, its a "bookkeeping of time like genomic mapping is a bookkeeping of genetics", but like several field and "discovery" based sciences, there are several sub disciplines that are hard sciences applied to history, like geophysics stratigraphy, metallurgy, ceramics , applied thermoluminescence, archeochronology (tree rings, C14) etc. Much of these applied to archeology, which is applied to studies of history (or pre-history).
Most carful studies of historical events ultimatel yield to archeological investigations.

Te METHODS of carrying out historical research are quite often scientific DISCIPLINES, so, by application, history is often a discipline too.

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@joefromchicago,

Dead serious. When is the last time you experimented with a supernova, a star, or a planet?

Is History an art or a science?

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