History: Science, Humanity, or Something Else?

While no one would confuse Momma Goldberg’s of Auburn as a wellspring of erudition, it was there, last night, while consuming drink and breaking bread (or, rather, cheap nachos) with the graduate cohort that I had a bit of inspiration for my first post to this blog.  The issue was one that I think dogs most historians:  is history a science, or is it one of the humanities?  This type of existential question is one that I think is important for us, as professionals, to consider.  After our conversation, it was brought to my attention that Ken Owen has written on this matter at The Junto in reaction to Eric Herschthal’s piece comparing popular history and popular science for Slate.  While I agree with the general thrust of Owen’s argument, on the question of history’s relationship to the sciences, I would like to suggest that the relationship might not be as cut and dry as Owen seems to suggest.  Specifically, history – or, academic history - is scientific, even if it is not considered one of the sciences in the sense that chemistry or biology is. 

History does most closely resemble the humanities, because of both what it is and, partially, in how the historian pursues his goals.  Specifically, the study of the human condition lies at the heart of historical inquiry.  As it is, something this enigmatic can be difficult to pin down with the preciseness that science requires.  And while some may see this lack of precision as a shortcoming, for me, it allows history to transcend the sciences because it isn’t chained down by the burden of preciseness.  Pursued as a humanity, history leaves room for argumentation, and especially in the manner in which we interpret our findings.  We are allowed to operate in the gray area where you can forge an argument out of competing interpretations that, in the end, allows us to understand something that isn’t physically tangible, or that is perhaps even unknowable given the transient state of past events and experiences.  History, where the sciences cannot, expands the boundaries of what we can know and understand about others and about ourselves because it does not share the constraints of the sciences.    

Nonetheless, there is something scientific about how the historian goes about finding, organizing, analyzing, and assessing information.  Without this type of scrutiny, the value of our findings are questionable, which can undermine the prestige (for lack of a better word) of our discipline vis-à-vis others.  Historian and philosopher R.G. Collingwood has written about this in the context of the Greeks, arguing that the history of Herodotus – and to a less extent, that of Thucydides - represented an important moment in the legitimization of history as a valid field of inquiry in Western thought, when it was elevated from being “a mere aggregate of perceptions” to a science.  How he did so was important, and while the method of the modern historian obviously differs from that of Herodotus, there are important similarities.  Specifically, the work of Herodotus represented a break from the myths and legends seen in, say, the Hebrew scriptures or in the work of Homer, and toward a line inquiry that was based on an asked or inferred question and the concession on the part of the inquirer to some degree of ignorance, whether in whole or in part, to that question.  This – the presence of a question – makes history scientific, if not exactly a science.  So too, then, do modern historians develop some sort of system for asking questions, scrutinizing, and assessing information, in a way that is scientific, a reality that we ought not forget even as we embrace the humanities.  (As an aside, for anyone who has read Collingwood more recently than I have or has an alternative reading of him, I welcome that dialogue.) 

Where history differs most significantly from the sciences is in our ability to go to a laboratory, recreate the conditions surrounding our inquiry, and to test our results repeatedly.  Historians lack the benefits of a laboratory, and what we study – the happenings of the past – are transient and no longer on this plane of existence.  Owen hits the nail on the head when he avers that, for whatever one might study, there is only a sample size of one.  Here, I might add that the sample size is less than that because the event has ceased to exist and is impossible to recreate.  Sure, we can view and assess the effects of past events, pieces of evidence, and eye witness accounts, but unlike a scientist who can smash atoms together and create energy (which is also transient), we cannot repeat the process. In that sense, both what we study and how we study it differs from the chemists’ relationship to their subject matter, or the toxicologists’ relationship to theirs’.  That is an inescapable reality.  Thus, because of its efficacy in interrogating the human condition and its because of its scientific limitations, history is a different animal than the physical sciences, or even the social sciences.    To compare it to the sciences without some important qualifications is an error, but, at the same time, not all of these comparisons should be readily dismissed. 

Historians should not lose sight of the reality that we ask questions, organize information, and create knowledge, and do so with scrutiny and rigor.  Ultimately, the issue of history being a humanity or a science is more akin to that of a sliding scale than an either/or proposition.  While history is closer to the humanities, we would be well served if we resist the urge to divorce our field from the sciences all together.