The Case for Historical Sciences

History is properly defined as the study of past events, particularly in human affairs. It has been, and continues to be, my favorite subject. In fact, I think it is one of the most important, and forgotten, studies of my generation. It is amazing that with Zettabytes of information accessible at our fingertips, the majority of Americans still truly don’t know history. If of such importance to a healthy and functioning society, you would think it would be foundational to every human being blessed with rational thought. Studies over the years show Americans of all ages fail to answer the most simple of questions. A 2008 study by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which surveyed more than 2,500 Americans, found that only half of adults in the country could name the three branches of government. The 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report found that only 18 percent of 8th graders were proficient or above in U.S. History, and only 23 percent in Civics.

What is also surprising, is that history is generally not considered to be a science, but something akin to the humanities. At best, history is classified as the least scientific of the social sciences. We have Political Science, Economics, heck we have Sociology and Psyschology, but we do not have Historical Sciences — Why? History is not just a mass of details and facts, and ironically, much of what we consider higher order fields within science are mental gymnastic exercises of, well, history. Portions of evolutionary biology, climatology, geology, anthropogeny, and astronomy rely on piecing facts, data, details, educated guesses, and sometimes clever imaginations to create knowledge of past events.

One could argue that the sciences don’t just rely on logic, but technology, so to be considered a true science, it must invoke the use of technology to uncover the uncovered and understand the misunderstood. But if that were so, much of the accumulated knowledge of our time would not have been deemed true scientific study. Mathematics, Theology, and Philosophy led us to Physics, Astronomy, and Biology — and had no use for technology. Technology is critical to continued breakthrough and advances in human knowledge, but technology is more of an enabler of science, rather than a precursor.

One could argue that true science must follow the scientific method. Better said this way, many assume the chief method of gaining scientific knowledge is the laboratory experiment, by which one manipulates the parameter whose effect is in question, executes parallel control experiments with that parameter held constant, holds other parameters constant throughout, replicates both the eperimental manipulation and the control experiment, and obtains quantitative data. This strategy, which works well for physics, chemistry, and molecular biology, is usually identified with sciences in the minds of the masses such that experimentation is often held to be the essence of the scientific method. By this logic, history is more of an odd cousin of real science. But much of science is not able to be experimented, much of it consists of data driven exercises of inductive reasoning (Inductive reasoning is a powerful tool, but sometimes false into fallacies of circular logic — I digress). However, the Nebular Hypothesis does not fit traditional scientific method based thinking. In fact, bluntly speaking, it is derived from inductive reasoning and openly admitted to just be a theoretical idea for something that could have happened. I would say that theories on the Eurasian migration have far more data, evidence, and experimentation, than theories on how our solar system came to be do.

In conclusion, if the proper definition of Science is a systematic and logical approach to discovering how things in the universe work, then History must meet that definition — and if History meets that definition, then there should be a discipline called Historical Sciences.

— Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer, 137 Ventures