Is History a science?

[jacobin1949]

Why Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is a Science

[This essay was written for some friends in February, 1997. I generally abbreviate "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism" as "Marxism-Leninism" or "Marxism" or just "MLM". See section 13 for comments about why Marxism-Leninism-Maoism has the name it has.]

1. You say that Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism) is a science. To most non-Marxists it seems like a dogma, not a science. Why do you say it's a science?

It is not a trivial matter to say what a science is. Why is physics a science? Or biology? Why is astronomy a science, while astrology is not?

As a first approximation we can say that a science is a discipline covering a certain range of phenomena, consisting of "facts" and "theories" (hypotheses which mold these facts into systems), both of which are continually tested against reality, and which are modified or discarded when sufficent evidence warrants.

(Dictionaries define 'science' in terms such as "a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study" and "knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method"[1] Scientific method is then defined in terms such as "principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses"[2] As can be seen, any adequate definition of science must at least allude to scientific method, since that is where its essence lies. My brief definition of science focuses on the most central element of scientific method, namely the testing of accepted facts and theories against reality.)

Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is a science because it covers a wide range of (primarily) social phenomena, systematizes these social phenomena with carefully developed theories, formulates numerous facts in terms of these theories, and tests both these facts and theories against reality through its practice in trying to change society and individual human beings. Like many other sciences it has made substantial progress in learning how to change the world, though like all the other sciences it still has a long way to go towards answering all such questions in its sphere of interest. Like the other sciences, it has itself changed and developed as it has been tested against reality. Since its beginnings in the 1840s...

* It has been greatly elaborated and fleshed out with new theories, major and minor, and many new facts have become clear in terms of those theories;
* It has discarded some incorrect theories and fallacious "facts" when they proved to be erroneous, and modified numerous others, correcting the elements of error while preserving the elements of truth;
* It has been applied with considerable success in making world-shaking revolutions in different countries with very different social situations, especially Russia and China, and in this it has been far more successful than any alternative theory;
* It has recognized that there are still problems it has not fully solved, and is focusing seriously on finding the solutions to these problems;
* It has strenuously struggled against those (and there are many) who would turn Marxism into a dogma, or "revise" away its scientifically validated essence; and
* It has applied a scientific scrutiny to its own principles and methods, and continues to do so with the utmost seriousness. In fact, it has taken this task further than any other specific science, to the point where "the science of science in general" (or in other words, scientific philosophy) has become a component part of Marxism.


2. So then, are you saying that Marxism is a science because it has some similarities to the physical sciences?

To be properly considered a science, any discipline must be sufficiently like the other sciences in the relevant ways. Marxism is a science in the same sense that physics, biology, astronomy, etc. are sciences. This can be demonstrated by pointing out many relevant analogies to the other sciences, and by explaining why certain apparent disanalogies are irrelevant.

No two sciences are exactly alike, of course, nor are the methods used to advance the various sciences always completely identical. "Scientific method" itself varies somewhat from science to science. You don't hear much about experiments with "blind controls" in astronomy, for example, though this is a very common, and indeed frequently essential, method in many of the biological sciences.

There are important differences between the social sciences and the natural sciences, just as there are important differences between the physical sciences and the biological sciences. But there are sufficient, relevant similarities or analogies between them that fully justify calling them all sciences. The same is true of Marxism.

3. Are you saying then that Marxism is the same as social science, properly understood, and that all genuine social science is actually part of Marxism?

Yes, more or less. There is however an important part of MLM, namely its philosophy, dialectical materialism, that goes beyond just social science. In fact this philosophy is itself just the most general and abstract science, consisting of the principles which have been summed up and abstracted from all the other sciences, not just social science.

It is probably also fair to say that there are some specialized aspects of society and social interactions which are not part of MLM, but rather should be called social psychology, sociolinguistics, etc. Still, our view is that, for the most part, genuine social science is nearly coextensive with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Those esoteric areas of genuine social science which are not directly part of Marxism are at least very strongly informed and influenced by it.

Many of the sorts of issues raised in contemporary bourgeois "social psychology", for example, are adequately analyzed only within Marxism. What for example is the primary motive force behind people's social activity? The Marxist answer is that it is the desire of people to advance their own group interests—and in class society, that means their own class interests. This is obviously a very basic element of Marxist theory. This is why I say that if there are parts of social psychology that are not part of Marxism, or at least immediately dependent on it, they must be the more esoteric parts. The same is true of sociolinguistics, etc.

4. What about sociology, as it is taught in the universities?

Sociology, as it presently exists, is pretty much a joke—as even most people involved in the other sciences recognize. Someone once remarked that the basic approach in sociology is to "put the obvious in terms of the unintelligible".[3] Why do sociologists use such obsurantist language? Because they are trying to obscure, not clear things up. When they are asserting "the obvious" they must use highfalutin' language to lend a false air of profundity to their remarks. And when, more often, they are attempting to hide the real truths about society (e.g., how privileged classes exploit and oppress the vast majority, both at home and abroad), they naturally have to use even more obscurantist language and twisted logic.

It is worth noting that bourgeois sociology has largely developed as a discipline opposed to, and fearful of, Marxism. Its basic reason for existence is to attack Marxism and to try to cook up some alternative to Marxism that is acceptable to the ruling class.

The true science of society, the true sociology, is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. But unfortunately the name "sociology" has been appropriated by bourgeois pseudo-science.

5. How about economics? Almost all the prominent economists dismiss Marxist economics out of hand.

Of course they do! That is how they have been indoctrinated and what they are paid to do—represent the economic interests of the capitalist ruling class, and "explain" ad nauseam why only capitalism can possibly work, and why the exploitation of labor is perpetually "necessary". (They don't actually use forbidden phrases like the "exploitation of labor", of course—code words are always used instead. Even capitalism itself is generally referred to with euphemisms such as "the free enterprise system" or (bizarrely enough) "democracy". The task of bourgeois social "science" is always more to hide the truth, than to proclaim it.

(I say it is bizarre for the ruling class to use the word 'democracy' to refer to the capitalist system for two reasons: First, through the history of capitalism, only some capitalist countries have been "democracies"; fascist and other authoritarian countries are also capitalist (though they often try to hide it). Secondly, and more importantly, bourgeois democracy is always a fraud—democratic in name only, as far as the ordinary people are concerned. Real democracy means the people having control over their own lives, which is certainly not the case in the U.S. except for the upper classes.)

Bourgeois economics, like sociology, is basically a pseudo-science. To this very day, they cannot even give a coherent explanation as to why there is such a thing as a business cycle under capitalism, why there are booms and busts, depressions and recessions. In fact in every boom period many bourgeois economists step forth to proclaim that business cycles are now a thing of the past—a proclamation that is hastily swept under the rug the moment a new downturn starts.

It is well known that their predictions and explanations for economic events are seldom in agreement with each other. This is another way of saying that it is all pretty much guess-work, not science. They are the modern equivalent of the court astrologers of old.

To the extent that bourgeois economics has any real substance at all, it lies entirely in protecting, promoting, and enhancing the economic "rights" and interests of the capitalist class against the working people, the unemployed, and the poor. Marxist economics, which we call political economy, openly proclaims its political nature, and determination to represent the interests of the working class and its allies. We can be open and truthful about our partisanship—because we are partisan towards the broad masses. However, bourgeois economics must hide the fact that it represents the interests of the small capitalist class against the workers; all bourgeois social "science" must necessarily lie about its goals and whose interests it serves.

6. Sciences make predictions. It seems like few of the predictions that Marxism has made have turned out to be correct.

Says who? Primarily the bourgeois enemies of Marxism, that's who! (Or else those whose only "education" comes from such people.) Consider this quote, for example:



Since none of Marx's predictions have come true (except the one in The German Ideology that socialism imposed on underdeveloped countries would make those countries poorer), it is no longer even pretended that Marxism is a "science." Thus freed from empirical reality, it has become for its desciples an esoteric system of enlightenment (not unlike medieval Kabbala) which need not concern the rest of us—for the time being, anyway.[4]


This is a comment by one George Sim Johnson in the local newspaper. And who might he be? Some expert on Marxism, perhaps? Actually, he is "a former vice president of a major investment bank" and a contributor to various right-wing periodicals such as National Review. And every single statement in the quotation is incorrect—even the statement that the ruling class no longer worries, or needs to worry about Marxism. (The very fact that he wrote these words gives the lie to that one!) We Marxists do not indeed "pretend" that Marxism is a science—we insist that it be a science, demanding that it be pursued and further developed as a science. Even his comment about the effect of socialism (while it lasted) in "underdeveloped" countries (Russia & China) is wrong; the welfare of the vast majority of people in these countries improved tremendously during the socialist periods (as even most non-Marxist authorities readily admit), though they by no means managed to catch up with the living standards in the imperialist countries.

And as for the predictions of Marx, and other Marxists, a great many of them—though, admittedly, not all of them—have turned out to be demonstrably correct. Our record in this regard is far, far better than those who reject Marxism.

An American journalist visited Karl Marx in his old age and asked him what he foresaw in the future. "In a deep and solemn tone, he replied, 'Struggle'."[5] Contrast this with the almost universal attitude of educated bourgeois people during the Victorian era, in which the march of European civilization seemed so assured it was scarcely necessary to even debate the matter. Peaceful progress was the well-nigh universal bourgeois expectation at that time, and only the great shock of World War I put an end to it. Look back at the 120 years since Marx made this basic prediction, with its world wars, invasions, mass genocides, ferocious class struggles, revolutions, nationalist struggles, religious struggles, and the like. Who was right? Marx or the Victorian bourgeois social-peace scenario?

Is Marx's prediction of struggle too vague for you, even if the Victorians didn't have a clue about it? Well then consider a very specific prediction made by Lenin (who died in 1924), as reported by the American liberal journalist George Seldes writing in 1929:



On another occasion he [Lenin] showed the same stubborn prejudices which characterize all the revolutionary leaders.

"When is the war between Japan and America coming?" he asked. He was assured there would be no war because there are no causes for war. "But there must be war," he insisted, "because capitalist countries cannot exist without wars."[6]


Of course the funny thing about this is not that the Marxist Lenin proved so very prescient about a future war between Japan and the U.S. (at a time when few if any others saw it coming), but that the bourgeois journalist Seldes was so cock-sure that Lenin must be wrong about it!

Not just Lenin, but Marxists in general predicted World War II, even though "The Great War" (World War I) was still proclaimed by many bourgeois ideologists as "the war that ended all wars". On umpteen occasions we Marxists have predicted (and still predict) future imperialist wars, while liberals at least (if not all reactionaries) predict eras of peace. On umpteen occasions we predicted (and still predict) class struggle between workers and capitalists within every capitalist country—while many capitalist-indoctrinated people imagine there can be social peace under this system.

7. Well, perhaps Marxists have been correct in predicting a protracted era of struggle, war, and revolution, over the past century. But what other successful predictions can you point to?

A huge number of Marx's predictions, big and small, have come true. To mention just a few that pop immediately to mind:

* that the tendency towards monopolies would continue, and intensify;
* that the boom-bust cycle of capitalism would continue, and that the capitalists would never be able to eliminate it (for reasons Marx explained in depth);
* that peasant-type (semi-feudal) agriculture would slowly give way to capitalist agriculture;
* that capitalism would more and more become an international system;
* that the class struggle would continue and grow;
* that the Union would prevail in the U.S. Civil War (because of the much more advanced capitalism of the Northern states);
* that the workers would not be able to hold on to power in the Paris Commune (the the very first working class revolution, in 1871);
* that the working class could only hold onto power, after seizing it, by establishing its own proletarian dictatorship over the defeated bourgeoisie (a lesson Marx summed up after the Paris Commune, and proven correct by subsequent history); and, late in his life,
* that the first successful proletarian revolution might well take place in Russia.


8. But haven't Marxists made many false predictions too? Didn't Marx predict the increasing immiseration of the working class for example, when in fact workers have improved their lives greatly over the decades?

It is true that sometimes Marxists have made erroneous predictions. It is not correct to say, however, that Marxism cannot be a science because Marxists have occasionally made partly or completely false predictions, any more than it is true to say that physics is not a science because prominent physicists have sometimes made false predictions. Consider these two gems from Lord Kelvin, for example, who was one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century, and the president of the Royal Society: "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" and "Radio has no future." These kinds of statements have gotten to be so numerous that Arthur C. Clarke even created a generalization about them: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."[7]

No science is "complete" and no scientist ever has a total grasp of even his/her own specialty as it stands at the given time. Thus there will always be some erroneous expectations, predictions, and generalizations in every science. Nevertheless, those with a good grasp of some science will be much more likely to be correct in their expectations and predictions than other people. Furthermore, if the discipline is a genuine science, those false expectations and predictions will lead to a revision of the theory so that it is much more likely to allow successful predictions in that area from then on.

Marx expected socialist revolution in Europe long before now; this was at least an implicit prediction of his, though I don't believe he ever proclaimed that revolution was certain by such-and-such a date. Similarly, he expected the immiseration of the European working class to develop much more systematically and thoroughly than it has in fact. There is a single error behind both of these misexpectations, or mispredictions if you will. Namely, he did not fully take into consideration the internationalization of many aspects and features of capitalism. (Lenin did this later; it is an example of how Marxism has corrected its errors as they have become apparent, and thus developed as a science.)

Thus major revolutions have in fact occurred—the heart of the prediction was true—, but they have tended so far to be on the periphery (Russia) or in the so-called Third World countries, the countries most viciously exploited and oppressed by imperialism (China, Vietnam, etc.).

Similarly, viewed on a world-wide basis, the expectation/prediction of the immiseration of the working classes has also proven to be quite correct. Of the six billion people in the world today, five billion live on less than $2 per day.[8] Of course the cost of living varies considerably around the world, but no matter where you are you are clearly living in extreme poverty if you have to get by on less than $2 per day.

However, the greatest poverty and misery is once again in the countries dominated and oppressed by imperialism, the countries of Asia, Latin-America and Africa primarily. The bourgeoisie, in order to keep some relative peace and stability at home, allowed (though only very reluctantly and under intense pressure) some measure of increasing wages and benefits to flow to the lower classes in the imperialist heart-lands; that is what the New Deal and the welfare state were all about. The ruling class adopted the position of Joseph Kennedy, who remarked that he was willing to give up a part of his fortune in order to hang on to the rest. But this concession was never more than a temporary necessity, in their eyes; and the capitalists and their politicians are now rapidly reversing the welfare state, and driving down the working class again (and also the middle classes). They see this as possible now that socialism is not viewed as a viable alternative to the workers (for the moment!), and a "necessary" thing now that capitalism is becoming more and more internationalized, with the necessity to drive wages down to the lowest international level "in order to compete". Thus even to the extent that it was once true in the dominant imperialist countries that the workers were becoming gradually better off than before, the trend for at least 25 years has been downward—to gradually take back the small concessions. And the rate of immiseration worldwide is now increasing rapidly.

Marxism is a science and that is why we have made changes to it, and why we are not bothered by the fact that some of Marx's original ideas and expectations have not turned out to be true, or completely true. Some of Galileo's ideas, and Newton's, and Darwin's have also turned out to be false, but this in no way lessens our great respect for these individuals, nor shows that physics and biology are not sciences. Just the opposite!

9. Most well-developed sciences have central organizing theories; for example, quantum electrodynamics in chemistry, evolutionary theory in natural history, and plate tectonics in geophysics. What, if any, is the central organizing theory in Marxism?

Most generally (i.e., philosophically), the central organizing theory of MLM is dialectical materialism. Specifically with regard to society, the central organizing theory of MLM is called historical materialism, which is the result of the application of dialectical materialism to society, economics and politics. Some of the main points of historical materialism are:

1. That human society and history can be understood scientifically.
2. That, however, material production is the basis of social life, and social consciousness is the result of social being.
3. That society and history are made by the people, by the masses of human beings.
4. That, however, the prevailing mode of production conditions and sets limits to the changes which can be made in society.
5. That social classes exist through people's differing relationship to the means of production (such as whether or not they own the factories and machinery).
6. That the history of society, since classes first developed in ancient times, is the history of class struggle.
7. That "at a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production.... From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters".[9]
8. That "at that point an era of social revolution begins".[10]
9. That society must ultimately progress to the stage of communism where classes have ceased to exist.
10. That between capitalism and communism there must be an intervening transition period (socialism), which can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie.

Within each sub-sphere of Marxism, there are also central organizing theories, such as Lenin's theory of modern imperialism, or Mao's theory of correct Marxist leadership (the "mass line").

10. If Marxism is a science, how come there is so much criticism of it? I suppose you'll say that it's because the rulers of this country find it dangerous to them, and pay thousands of intellectual "prostitutes" to attack it. But can you really maintain that so many critics are all just bought off?

It is not quite as simple as them just buying people off, though that happens too. The dominant ideas of any age are those of the rulers, and not just because they try very hard to suppress all other ideas or because they pay lots of people to promote their viewpoint. The main reason that most people, including their paid propagandists, promote ideas favorable to the ruling class is because they themselves have been brought up to share the outlook of their rulers, to one degree or another. They themselves have been indoctrinated from the cradle by the all-pervasive torrent of rich-man's attitudes, distorted facts, unscientific social theories, along with plenty of outright lies. From TV cartoons for pre-schoolers to journals of sociology, from kindergarten through grad school, in the Boy Scouts, in churches and organizations of all kinds, on radio and TV, in virtually all newspapers and magazines—the bourgeois world view is drummed into people. It would be considered treasonous if every football game did not start with a display of obeisance to the ruling class (the Pledge of Allegiance).

Moreover we Marxists think that people tend to believe what it is in their own interests to believe (unless powerfully indoctrinated with contrary views). If you make it clear to reporters, and economists, teachers and professors, that their own career advancement depends upon their trumpeting a certain point of view, it is remarkable how "true" that point of view will begin to seem to them.

11. But you still can't deny that Marxism is a whole lot more controversial than most other sciences!

We don't deny it at all, but it is easy to explain. In his fine book, The Science of Revolution, Lenny Wolff remarks that



Some have attempted to deny the scientific character of Marxism because of the controversy surrounding it; but controversy alone cannot rule a theory unscientific. Darwin's theory of evolution, after all, touched off something of a cataclysm in the scientific community, as did Einstein's theory of relativity. Scientists, as well as much of the rest of society, divided into contending camps over these theories; in both cases the struggle and eventual triumph of the proponents of the radical new theories had profound social ramifications.... [Marxism] has most deeply divided society—and most affected it—that alone cannot make it unscientific. That a scientific theory directly hitting the tenderest nerve of bourgeois society—its exploitative class relations and its tendency toward proletarian revolution—causes the most unprecedented and far-reaching controversy is hardly surprising![11]


And it is not just evolution and relativity that were controversial when first introduced, but virtually all great new scientific theories which cover a wide range of phenomena. Copernicus's theory that the earth goes around the sun (rather than vice versa) was certainly controversial for a long time. It got Giordano Bruno burned at the stake by the Church, and almost Galileo too. It was "outlawed" in some areas for a couple centuries or more! In geophysics, Alfred Wegener provided plenty of good arguments and lots of evidence for continental drift at the beginning of the 20th century, but his theory was rejected until the 1960s by almost all geophysicists who just couldn't believe that something as big as a continent could "move around". Now plate tectonics is universally accepted. So controversy and rejection by many conservatives are almost the norm in science, for varying lengths of time.

Most people have little direct experience with science and its constant controversies, however. We've all learned most of what science we know from school books that treat it as a collection of dead issues, devoid of controversy, and portray only the final consensus on a large number of once very controversial ideas that are no longer controversial.

12. But surely the collapse of the Soviet Union and most of the rest of the Communist regimes in the world has shown that Marxism is not a science after all, but rather a completely failed—if perhaps noble—utopian experiment!

I will discuss the Soviet Union in detail elsewhere, but for now I'll just say that what collapsed in 1991 was not at all a Marxist, nor socialist, let alone a communist country. From our point of view socialism ended in the Soviet Union with Khrushchev's revisionist takeover during the 1953-1957 period. And socialism itself did not "collapse" at that time—it was overthrown by a new group of exploiters who came to power within the Communist Party.

It is true, of course, that this seizure of a socialist state by a newly risen state-capitalist class within the Party could not have happened if there had not been serious weaknesses in Soviet society. But these weaknesses were not—as you have probably been led to believe—economic. (The economic weaknesses, the stagnation and even hidden recessions, developed in the revisionist era with the introduction of state capitalism.) In fact, in 1955 industrial production in the Soviet Union stood at twenty-five times the level in 1913![12] And this was in spite of having to fight two devastating world wars on its soil, a terrible famine after World War I, the disruptions of the revolution, and much worse than the revolution itself, the civil war that followed which included the invasion by 13 capitalist countries (including the U.S.). Despite all of these disruptions, the very backward capitalist state of 1913 had become a powerful industrial economy by the 1950s. No matter what capitalist ideologists may say now, the Soviet working class clearly proved that socialist economics works, and that it can work better than capitalism.

So where then were the fatal weaknesses that led to the revisionist coup? There are a variety of social and political reasons, but in my opinion the most important was in the way that Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party tended to rule on behalf of the working class, rather than leading the working class to directly rule society itself and watch out for its own collective interests. This paternalism disarmed the people, and they were not able to recognize the seizure of power by their class enemies when it first came. When they did finally throw off the usurpers 35 years later, socialism had long since been wrecked.

But the point for now is just that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 in no way proves that Marxism has failed. Instead it proves the need for a far more consistent and thoroughgoing socialist state run more directly by the masses themselves. Socialism, as a constantly changing and transitional system, is inherently unstable; it must either degenerate back into capitalism, or else go forward to the solid stability of communist society.

13. So why does Marxism, or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, have such a strange name if it is a science? None of the other sciences are named after individuals.

That's not quite true; evolutionary theory is often called Darwinism, for example. The more contention there is over a science the more likely it is that the names of individuals will become prominently associated with it, or even be used as a name for the science. And of course, this is bound to be especially true in social science where the interests of groups of people are represented or threatened by various social theories.

Marx and Engels themselves called their theory "scientific socialism", to distinguish it from the various earlier, pre-scientific forms of socialism (utopian socialism). However today, that is no longer such a good name for the science, even from the point of view of us Marxists. For one thing, in the past century 'socialism' has come to mean just what Marx called "the first stage of socialism" while the final goal (what Marx called "the second stage of socialism") we now call 'communism'. Furthermore, the name 'socialism' has become somewhat discredited by the anti-working class attitudes and actions of most of those who have called themselves "socialists".

If the world were more rational, the best name for Marxism-Leninism-Maoism would just be something straight-forward, like "social science" or "sociology". But those names are taken, as I mentioned above, by the ruling class establishment pseudo-science of sociology. Since the ruling capitalist class (or bourgeoisie) dominates the language through its ownership and control of the media, and has corrupted such phrases, we have had to fall back on the term Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, after the three greatest leaders and developers of the theory, or sometimes just "Marxism" for short. We can at least be sure that the capitalists will have a very much harder time co-opting a science named after these great revolutionaries who they hate!


—Scott H.
2/6/97
Slightly expanded: 9/4/04

Notes
[1] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed. (1993).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Samuel T. Williamson, "How to Write Like a Social Scientist", Rule 4, Saturday Review [date unknown]. Quoted in R. John Brockmann & William Horton, The Writer's Pocket Almanack (Santa Monica, CA: InfoBooks, 1988), p. 8.

[4] George Sim Johnson, "Everything Goes, Nothing Matters", Image magazine supplement, San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 3, 1991.

[5] John Swinton, reporting on an interview with Karl Marx for the New York Sun, Sept. 6, 1880.

[6] George Seldes, You Can't Print That! (Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing Co., 1929), p. 221.

[7] Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future (1973).

[8] Mentioned by the prominent bourgeois economist, Jeffrey Garten, in an "Economic Viewpoint" column in Business Week, Sept. 6, 2004, p. 28. Garten is dean of the Yale School of Management.

[9] Karl Marx, Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, (Peking: 1976), pp. 3-4.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Lenny Wolff, The Science of Revolution: An Introduction (Chicago: RCP Publications, 1983), pp. 12-13.

[12] Emile Burns, An Introduction to Marxism (NY: International Publishers, 1966), p. 78. The author was a British revisionist, and you may dismiss him as biased—though other books I've read, both by friends of the Soviet Union and by enemies, suggest that this figure is in the right ball park. Even most rabid anti-communist authorities admit that Soviet industrial production increased at a very rapid overall pace during its first three decades (what we Maoists count as the socialist period).



— End —

[Invader Zim]

History is not a science. I can't be bothered to go into great depths, but individuals such as E. H. Carr long sinse debunked that 19th century nonsense.

[BobKKKindle$]

No. The scientific method is used to provide explanations for the behavior of the natural world based on empirical evidence and tested hypotheses. 'History' is simply a record of what has occurred in the past. Although Historians may evaluate why changes took place through examining the relative importance of different factors, and history can also be used to predict future changes by drawing parallels between contemporary and past events, history cannot be described as a science.

As for whether Marxism (which is not synonymous with 'History' as the title of your thread seems to suggest) is a science, this is a more complex matter. The most important criterion for establishing whether a body of knowledge of specific theory is scientific is whether it can be disproved (Popper). Scientists adapt (or, in some cases, discard) theories when new evidence, which can contradict their original hypothesis, arises. In the case of Marxism, 'new' empirical evidence, which in this case is not evidence as such but simply how capitalism has developed, has supported many of Marx's predictions. When Marx's hypotheses have been contradicted, we have been able to account for this by developing Marxism – hence Marxism is an 'organic' science which undergoes change all the time in response to Capitalism's development.

There are however many unanswered questions, the most importance of which is the link between value (derived from the LTV) and price, otherwise known as the transformation problem which, to my knowledge, is still open. Until this question (and others, but this one in particular as it is such an important part of Marxist economics) is answered, Marxism can, in my view, not be described as a science.

A further issue to consider on the subject of scientific validity - Hypothetically, what evidence would have to emerge for us to discard Marxism entirely instead of merely changing or adding to the original theory?

[mikelepore]

Science can be applied to anything that has some repeated patterns. History has some regularity and patterns. Whether or not the application of science to it is being done properly is another matter. Medicine used to hurt more people than it cured, and yet medicine is a science; that is, previously it wasn't being done properly.

[MarxSchmarx]

Well, to answer the original question, history is a science. For instance, our understanding of historical events like the big bang, the origin of life, early hominids, all are sub-disciplines of traditional sciences like astronomy, biochemistry and paleo-biology.

Even sub-branches of the social science we call "history", focusing on cultures since they began writing, are largely "scientific", as in archeology or historical linguistics.

But MLM is a little more suspect. For instance:



The most important criterion for establishing whether a body of knowledge of specific theory is scientific is whether it can be disproved (Popper). Scientists adapt (or, in some cases, discard) theories when new evidence, which can contradict their original hypothesis, arises. In the case of Marxism, 'new' empirical evidence, which in this case is not evidence as such but simply how capitalism has developed, has supported many of Marx's predictions. When Marx's hypotheses have been contradicted, we have been able to account for this by developing Marxism – hence Marxism is an 'organic' science which undergoes change all the time in response to Capitalism's development.

The problem is, it is hard for me to conceive of a phenomenon that Marxism simply cannot account for. In other words, there are no real "anomolies" in MLM, the way there are anomalies in Newtonian or even quantum mechanics. Nor are there really social phenomenon that are outside the ken of MLM, the way there are evolutionary phenomenon outside the ken of natural selection. For every social phenomenon, there is an MLM explanation for it, no matter how convoluted. This speaks more to a system imposing itself on the world than being tested by the world, and hence is not scientific.

Indeed, the OP recognizes this limitation to "scientific" MLM, as in:


Hypothetically, what evidence would have to emerge for us to discard Marxism entirely instead of merely changing or adding to the original theory?

I have a hard time thinking of an example. Of course, we can say there are predictions Marx made that have been discredited. But then Lenin revised Marx's predictions, and showed that Marx's errors were errors of inference, and that the premises of marx were sound. And of course when Lenin's predictions were discredited, Mao showed that Lenin's errors were errors of inference, and that the premises of Marx and Lenin were sound. Ad nauseum. Nothing goes directly to the premises of Marxism, and until that happens, it will be impossible to engage MLM as a scientific theory.

Nor is it obvious what constitutes "validation" in MLM. For all its faults, statistical validation is the gold standard for the social, biological and physical sciences. I don't believe statistical validation is the gold standard for Marxism. It helps Marxian arguments, but the validity of MLM doesn't seem to depend on statistical arguments, at least in the way the theory developed. This puts it squarely outside the scientific mainstream.

[mikelepore]

Sciences that study systems that have many variables doesn't make predictions. With a system that has a few variables it can be done. You can predict what will happen if you take a sample of gas and modify the volume, pressure and temperature. But no scientist could have predicted that natural selection would make the giraffe have a long neck. Since human society has many variables, a social science doesn't make specific predictions. Given that, the fact that many Marxists anticipated the war-depression-war-depression cycle, the modern forms of imperialism, the concentation and globalization of corporations, etc., is a phenomenal degree of success.

[Dr Mindbender]

if history isnt a science then what is it? It certainly isnt an artform, even though history graduates recieve an 'MA' or 'BA'.

What about applied branches of history, like archaeology?

[BobKKKindle$]

if history isnt a science then what is it? It certainly isnt an artform, even though history graduates recieve an 'MA' or 'BA'.

History is a humanity – a study of the human condition. One might well ask the question of why we actually choose to study something which has a limited practical application and is of questionable relevance to our immediate material existence. History can of course support disciplines which infer a form of praxis (such as revolutionary politics) for reasons I have stated above – the predictions that can be derived from historical experience being the most important – but, as a subject by itself, history serves no clear purpose other than to provide entertainment for those that find it interesting.

Any answers? Why is History important?

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 24, 2007 03:09 am
History is not a science. I can't be bothered to go into great depths, but individuals such as E. H. Carr long sinse debunked that 19th century nonsense.
History is, of course, a science.

It is not, obviously, a science like physics, chemistry or biology (but, on a second thought, biology is not a science like physics, and physics is not a science like biology, so... this just means that physics, chemistry, or biology, are not sciences like history).

If it is not a science, what else is it? An art, a sport, a waste of time?

Luís Henrique

[Marsella]

It is not, obviously, a science like physics, chemistry or biology (but, on a second thought, biology is not a science like physics, and physics is not a science like biology, so... this just means that physics, chemistry, or biology, are not sciences like history).

How is biology not a science like physics? :wacko:

It seems to me that the main basis of science is putting forth a hypothesis and then proving that hypothesis with as much data or proof as possible. Then it is criticised again by scientists. If there is a 'break' in proof then the hypothesis fails.

History at best puts forth arguments. Facts are used to substantiate those arguments. It does not have the same certainty as say, maths or chemistry (although there are doubts in even those areas).

And it depends on what 'history' you are talking about. Typically, the one taught in schools involves memorising dates and issues. That is not science. However, when people like Marx attempted to really critically ask 'why did this happen?' 'what caused this?' 'what was the true motive?' and then explains that with reference to objective conditions - economic, classes, etc. Then that seems more like science, because there is some sort of objective truth to it, rather than personal opinion. It is scientific socialism after all - not a moralist clique.


Any answers? Why is History important?

Cliche, I know, but from the lessons it offers.

Past failures, or successes, allow us to re-examine our aims and methods.


Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Marx, 1852, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm)

[Hit The North]

In The German Ideology, Marx & Engels claim that their approach rests not on philosophically derived abstractions or dogmas but on observation of real events which can be verified empirically. In other words, historical materialism is the scientific investigation of human history.

I'm surprised to find a good Marxist like Bobkindles denying this central tenet.

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by Citizen [email protected] 24, 2007 05:20 pm
In The German Ideology, Marx & Engels claim that their approach rests not on philosophically derived abstractions or dogmas but on observation of real events which can be verified empirically. In other words, historical materialism is the scientific investigation of human history.

I'm surprised to find a good Marxist like Bobkindles denying this central tenet.
Marx and Engels were writing in the 19th century when history as an academic disipline was in its formative years and historians did indeed see them selves as 'scientists' they were wrong.

Science is based upon testable hypotheses, history is not.

Scientific knowledge tends to be far more cumilative; this is largely because historians are often concerned with contradicting their predecesors than actually building on them.


If it is not a science, what else is it? An art

It is certainly nearer an art than it is a science. To suggest that history is a science is to fundermentally misunderstand the nature of history and the nature of science.

One factor which helps people get their head round this is to consider a simple scientific experiment. If you add two specific elements together you will get a specific compound. In history, you can have the same contributing factors and get a very different outcome.


Read E. H. Carr, What is History or Richard J. Evans, In defence of history


However, when people like Marx attempted to really critically ask 'why did this happen?' 'what caused this?' 'what was the true motive?' and then explains that with reference to objective conditions - economic, classes, etc. Then that seems more like science, because there is some sort of objective truth to it, rather than personal opinion.

You can base your case upon facts, and construct an argument regarding what you think caused 'x' event in history; but a different historian can take the exact same facts and come to a completely different account. That is why history is subjective and not a science; it is down to personal perspective.

[Hit The North]

Marx and Engels were writing in the 19th century when history as an academic disipline was in its formative years and historians did indeed see them selves as 'scientists' they were wrong.

Wrong according to whom?

The real question is whether history has an intelligible pattern or whether it is a series of random episodes, created by fortune and chance. If it's the latter, then no kind of scientific approach can help us to understand it.

[More Fire for the People]

No. I lean towards the view that history does not approximate the physical sciences. The physical sciences deal with relations between non-aware substances: cells, plants, rocks, neutrons, etc. History is a conscious biotic, human process. The relationships between variables in a human equation are based upon agency and activity. Humans encounter the world. They are subjective and able to affect course and direction. However, I do not exclude history from the grand branch of science because it is a social science. Social sciences use rational and methodological approaches to infer qualities about human processes. This includes empirical evidence (historical facts) and reasoned analysis (theories of history). Marx observed historical fact (Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte). Marx reasoned theories of history (the materialist conception of history). Hence, Marx’s work is a social science.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24, 2007 04:09 am
'History' is simply a record of what has occurred in the past.
Hell.

That's exactly what History is not.

The "simple record of what has occurred in the past" is the raw material of the historian, but it is by no means History. If it was, we would have no need for historians - History would be already written in the primary documents.

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

Wrong according to whom?

With the exception of the very old, or dead, just about the entire academic community of historians.



The real question is whether history has an intelligible pattern or whether it is a series of random episodes, created by fortune and chance. If it's the latter, then no kind of scientific approach can help us to understand it.

It has, to an extent, a pattern, but that is it. I can, for example, use my knowledge of history to predict that there will be another war or conflict. What I cannot do is tell you what elements will be involved in this war, what will cause the war, who will win the war or who will even participate in the war. So in that respect, history does have a very loose patern, but it is an utterly unintelligable one.


If it was, we would have no need for historians - History would be already written in the primary documents.

Then clearly history is not a science; if history was a science, then its sources would not require subjective critical analysis by historians. All history would require is a chronicler if it were science.

[Dr Mindbender]

Alright, i think this is a fair classification- how about 'human science'?

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by Ulster [email protected] 24, 2007 10:37 pm
Alright, i think this is a fair classification- how about 'human science'?
No, because it is not a science of any kind. Its not even akin to human geography, which is a social science.

For a mathematician in 1910 one added to one equalled two. For a historian in 1910, it was great men who steered the course of history, made important political decisions, etc. Now, for a mathematician one added to one still equals two. For the historian today, all kinds influences make up the past. Individuals, the enviroment, the masses, the economy, etc.

History deals with the subjective interpritation of documents in the past; as the historians view is coloured by his/her enviroment, idea's and biases (as did the author of the sources historian relies upon) and so the history they produce reflects this. For a mathematician, this simply is not the case, no amount of social context will alter the fact that 1+1=2.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 24, 2007 10:14 pm
I can, for example, use my knowledge of history to predict that there will be another war or conflict. What I cannot do is tell you what elements will be involved in this war, what will cause the war, who will win the war or who will even participate in the war. So in that respect, history does have a very loose patern, but it is an utterly unintelligable one.
But, through understanding certain facts and historical events, you could, just as in science, develop a hypothesis about those things.

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by The Anarchist Tension+November 24, 2007 10:50 pm--> (The Anarchist Tension @ November 24, 2007 10:50 pm)
Invader [email protected] 24, 2007 10:14 pm
I can, for example, use my knowledge of history to predict that there will be another war or conflict. What I cannot do is tell you what elements will be involved in this war, what will cause the war, who will win the war or who will even participate in the war. So in that respect, history does have a very loose patern, but it is an utterly unintelligable one.
But, through understanding certain facts and historical events, you could, just as in science, develop a hypothesis about those things. [/b]
Historians have tried it, and it doesn't work. Mass human behaviour is unpredictable; for example historians utterly failed to predict the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-91.

To quote Evans: -

"The fact is that while a chemist, for instance, knows in advance the result of mixing of two elements in a crucible, the historian has no such advance knowledge of anything, nor is trying to gain such knowledge really central to the business historians are engaged in."

This kind of thought displayed in this thread sounds like people are confusing the work of historians with the nonsense field that futurists are engaged in.

[BobKKKindle$]

The "simple record of what has occurred in the past" is the raw material of the historian, but it is by no means History. If it was, we would have no need for historians - History would be already written in the primary documents.

You misunderstand. I realize that primary material alone cannot serve as an effective record of past events because the underlying causes of change over a long period of time are not specified – and thus Historians examine the primary material they have available, and, taking into account such factors as reliability and bias, develop what they feel is an accurate narrative or explanation. I have never suggested anything otherwise.


In The German Ideology, Marx & Engels claim that their approach rests not on philosophically derived abstractions or dogmas but on observation of real events which can be verified empirically. In other words, historical materialism is the scientific investigation of human history.

Yet Marxists have so often been unable to predict historical events or have made incorrect predictions. For example, Leon Trotsky's prediction that the Soviet Union would not survive the Second world War without revolution in other countries and internal revolt against the bureau cry which had denied the proletariat political power.
(L. Trotsky, Writings 1935-36 (New York, 1974), p.260. ) Given that the most important characteristic of a scientific discipline is the ability to make predictions based on past empirical observation (from which theories or models have been derived), HM is not scientific, or at least not to the same degree as the natural sciences? Or, would you argue that, when Marxists have made incorrect predictions, that have simply not applied this investigative method correctly?

[BobKKKindle$]

For a mathematician in 1910 one added to one equalled two. For a historian in 1910, it was great men who steered the course of history, made important political decisions, etc. Now, for a mathematician one added to one still equals two. For the historian today, all kinds influences make up the past. Individuals, the enviroment, the masses, the economy, etc.

Why these different historical interpretations? Would you argue that History is a form of ideology like ethics in that it is propagated in order to obscure or justify the prevailing contradictions of society, thereby securing the interests of the ruling class? How, then, is HM revolutionary?

[Invader Zim]

Why these different historical interpretations?

The passing of time brings new, and indeed better (sometimes), ways of looking at things. History is no different.


Would you argue that History is a form of ideology like ethics in that it is propagated in order to obscure or justify the prevailing contradictions of society, thereby securing the interests of the ruling class?

I would argue that leftists often invoke history to support an interpretation of phenomena that should not exist. The interpretation, not the phenomena, that is.

But as most historians, though not all, are convinced leftists (of various degrees); I am not sure what ground your view holds.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 24, 2007 09:14 pm

Wrong according to whom?

With the exception of the very old, or dead, just about the entire academic community of historians.
Not true!



If it was, we would have no need for historians - History would be already written in the primary documents.

Then clearly history is not a science; if history was a science, then its sources would not require subjective critical analysis by historians. All history would require is a chronicler if it were science.

So do you really believe that physics, or biology, don't require "subjective" critical analysis by physicists or biologists?

I'm starting to understand that you have actually no clue about what is science.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25, 2007 01:54 am
Yet Marxists have so often been unable to predict historical events or have made incorrect predictions.
This, however, is immaterial to the issue of History being a science or not.

Geologists are certainly unable to predict the future of Earth - but I hope no one is going to argue now that Geology is not a science...

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 24, 2007 09:40 pm
For a mathematician in 1910 one added to one equalled two. For a historian in 1910, it was great men who steered the course of history, made important political decisions, etc. Now, for a mathematician one added to one still equals two. For the historian today, all kinds influences make up the past. Individuals, the enviroment, the masses, the economy, etc.
A mathematician in 1910 wouldn't know how to demonstrate Fermat's theorem. S/he wouldn't know Goedel's theorem and its demonstration (and would, as such, hold a naïve faith in the possibility of an all-encompassing closed mathematical system). S/he would have no clue about the difference between aleph-0 and aleph-1. S/he would not be aware of the entire field of chaos theory. To him/her, non-linear equations, as well as non-derivable functions, would be curious exceptions.

And this though Mathematics isn't even an experimental science!

A physicist in 1910 would believe in Aether; would believe there was no limit to speed; would believe Laplace's demon to be a theorical possibility; would understand atoms as little solid balls (very strangely, since "solidity" is a relationship between molecules); would have never ever thought of quarks; would be totally unaware of Quantic Mechanics or of Relativistic Physics; his/her notions of cosmology would be completely uncompatible with a modern physicist's.

So? Physics isn't a science, now?

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

Not true!

Actually, it is true. But if you really want a lecture in historiography, I would advise you enrole at a university.

But for a starting point, one of the key advocates of the 'history is a science' camp was the highly rightwing conservative Sir Geoffrey Elton, who was roundly thrashed in debate by E. H. Carr; and Elton died in 1994 and his book The Practice of History which embodied his views on history was published in 1967.

The study of history has moved on from 1967; and so should you.



A mathematician in 1910 wouldn't know how to demonstrate Fermat's theorem.

But, from here on out, they will. Tomorrow Historians will undoubtedly disagree with much of what todays historians publish. This is why scientific knowledge is cumulative and historical knowledge tends to be less so, a point I have already outlined.



A physicist in 1910 would believe in Aether

Indeed they did, but that has been conclusively disproved; no historian can hope to conclusively disprove anything. At best a historian can construct a firm argument, that seems more likely than another argument; unlike scientists historians do not create 'laws'.

To take an example, in the 1940's and the1950's British historians roundly criticised the Chamberlain government and condemned the appeasment policy, works such as 'The Guilty Men' (1940) steered publical and historical opinion. In 1961 A. J. P. Taylor contradicted that thesis, which then led historians to radically reapproach the appeasment policy. By the 1990's there were counter revisionists such as McDonough contradicting Taylor. Yet we will never know conclusively which side of the debate is 'correct', because historians are not a scientists and cannot conclusively 'prove' anything. As a friend of mine from the biology department likes to point out, if you can't test for it; its not a science. You can't test historical conclusions.


Geologists are certainly unable to predict the future of Earth

Actually they can predict, based on current trends, the movement of plates. They can also predict variations in coast lines based on weathering, erosion, etc. A historian cannot predict anything and when they try they employ generalisations; and usually turn out wrong.



So do you really believe that physics, or biology, don't require "subjective" critical analysis by physicists or biologists?

Certainly not to the same degree. The results of an experiment will show a result; either the hypothesis of the scientist will be confirmed, or it won't. Science deals with absolutes of that nature; history doesn't.

Ultimately good historians attempt to be objective as possible, but any historian who claims not to have any bias at all is either a liar or deluded. The results of a test on the other hand are objective; the end product of a historians labours are not remotely objective.



I'm starting to understand that you have actually no clue about what is science.

Coming from the individual who thinks history is a science; that is rather hypocritical, as it is plain you don't understand either history or science (I can throw irrelevent ad hominems around as well, you know). I, on the other hand, am studing for a masters in former to prove my understanding to a board of senior academics whom i hope will give me money to fund a Ph.D, so I think I have a slight advantage over you on that score.

[RGacky3]

History is not a science because you cannot apply scientific method to it, and its not predictable and subject to interpritation.

Calling it a science is very dangerous and is a big reason the many Maoists and Leninists are so dogmatic and are so dissalussioned about Society, because they try and explain everything through scientific Marxist glasses, and you can't, and because of that they come to wrong conclusions.

[rosa-rl]

First, dialectical materialism is a philosophical world view, not a science. It is also a method of approaching and understanding the world that can be applied to everything in order to get a deeper understanding of it.

Historical materialism is an application of dialectical materialism in the realm of theory - that is that it is used to draw conclusions from available data and reach summations however this understanding is by nature imperfect since all the data is not available.

MLMist calling dialectical and historical materialism 'the science of revolution' is one of the reasons that I am no longer a member of the RCP. It puts far too much emphasis on what is actually our limited and relative understanding of the world. To call MLM is science is to verge on dogma if not to go over to it completely.

It also demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of the roles of philosophy and theory in the process of changing the world - a process in which - through the further accumulation of knowledge - philosophy and theory is itself deepened and transformed.

Rosa-RL

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 25, 2007 02:30 pm
Actually, it is true. But if you really want a lecture in historiography, I would advise you enrole at a university.
You must be kidding. Why would I do it again?!


But for a starting point, one of the key advocates of the 'history is a science' camp was the highly rightwing conservative Sir Geoffrey Elton, who was roundly thrashed in debate by E. H. Carr; and Elton died in 1994 and his book The Practice of History which embodied his views on history was published in 1967.

The divide between conservatives and leftists has nothing to do with History being a science or not.

You are relying in a controversy that is decades old, and trying to present it as the state of art.


The study of history has moved on from 1967; and so should you.

I got my degree a quarter century after Elton published his book, and he was never influential in my formation as a historian.

But, according to you, History is not a science, but can be studied? What do we study in History, if we aren't trying to increase our knowledge of History in a systematical way?


But, from here on out, they will. Tomorrow Historians will undoubtedly disagree with much of what todays historians publish. This is why scientific knowledge is cumulative and historical knowledge tends to be less so, a point I have already outlined.

Only mathematical knowledge is truly cumulative. Experimental science works in a very different way, by establishing paradigms and then breaking them. History, in such respect, is no different from physics of biology.



A physicist in 1910 would believe in Aether

Indeed they did, but that has been conclusively disproved; no historian can hope to conclusively disprove anything. At best a historian can construct a firm argument, that seems more likely than another argument; unlike scientists historians do not create 'laws'.

You are wrong - aether has not been "conclusively disproved". It is no longer the best explanation for the phenomena we know from experience.

In fact, I would say nothing can be conclusively disproven through induction, which is the core of scientifical method.

Scientific "laws" are just approximative models, and as it easy to see, there is only one science in which they are truly relevant - physic/chemistry (there are biological "laws", such as Mendel's, but their relevance to biology is much lesser than physical laws are to physics).


To take an example, in the 1940's and the1950's British historians roundly criticised the Chamberlain government and condemned the appeasment policy, works such as 'The Guilty Men' (1940) steered publical and historical opinion. In 1961 A. J. P. Taylor contradicted that thesis, which then led historians to radically reapproach the appeasment policy. By the 1990's there were counter revisionists such as McDonough contradicting Taylor. Yet we will never know conclusively which side of the debate is 'correct', because historians are not a scientists and cannot conclusively 'prove' anything. As a friend of mine from the biology department likes to point out, if you can't test for it; its not a science. You can't test historical conclusions.

Of course you can - you have to pitch them against the available data. The difference is that you cannot repeat experiences in History as you can in ordinary physics or biology. But you cannot also "test" physical hypothesis about the origin of the universe, of biological hypothesis about the origin of life. That does not make them less "scientifical". Your friend from the biology department may be a great biologist, but s/he is a quite weak epistemologist.


Actually they can predict, based on current trends, the movement of plates. They can also predict variations in coast lines based on weathering, erosion, etc.

To a very, very limited extent, yes, they can. That extent is basically conditioned by a "everything remaining as it is" hypothesis.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that they could accurately predict the movement of the continental plates for the next million years. Is this the criterium for the scientifical status of geology? Remember that only half a century ago, geologists had no idea about any of this - and those who had an intuition of it were outside the mainstream. Was geology not a science before it learned to predict the continental drift?


A historian cannot predict anything and when they try they employ generalisations; and usually turn out wrong.

Of course we can predict a lot of things; but we deal with a subject in which things happen in a completely different pace. A geologist can predict what is going to happen in the next few millenia - because, essentially, nothing is going to happen in the next few millenia, in a geological perspective. It is akin to a historian "predicting" that workers will wake up tomorrow throughout the world, and go to their workplace to do what their employers tell them.


Certainly not to the same degree. The results of an experiment will show a result; either the hypothesis of the scientist will be confirmed, or it won't. Science deals with absolutes of that nature; history doesn't.

However, the actual meaning of the experimental results are what science is about; this is far from being transparent from the experiments themselves. The experiment that "disproved" aether only showed that the speed of light didn't add up with Earth's speed. To work out that this meant that the universe is "curve" in a fourth dimension, implying a non-euclidean geometry - that is what effectively science is, and the raw data don't do that.


Coming from the individual who thinks history is a science; that is rather hypocritical, as it is plain you don't understand either history or science (I can throw irrelevent ad hominems around as well, you know). I, on the other hand, am studing for a masters in former to prove my understanding to a board of senior academics whom i hope will give me money to fund a Ph.D, so I think I have a slight advantage over you on that score.

I don't think you have any advantage here. Your conception of science is still a XIX century positivist view. That's why you take that the fact that History cannot possibly be Comte's "social physics" as contradictory with the scientific statute of the discipline.

But I would like to see you proving that I have no understanding of History; it would be funny, at least.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 25, 2007 02:30 pm
Coming from the individual who thinks history is a science; that is rather hypocritical, as it is plain you don't understand either history or science (I can throw irrelevent ad hominems around as well, you know).
In any case, this does conclusively prove that you don't know what an ad hominem is. An argumentum ad hominem tries to make a point from the personal prestige or lack of thereof of the person who makes a statement (Albert Einstein believed in God, so God must exist; Adolf Hitler thought that Karl Luger was a better practical politician than Georg Schoenerer, so Schoenerer must have been better).

Which is the exact reverse of what I am doing here - taking conclusions about your status as a thinker from the quality of the arguments you produce.

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

The divide between conservatives and leftists has nothing to do with History being a science or not.

Well, it is a noticable trend that leftwing historians take one side; conservatives take the other. However, that wasn't my point as Carr was no socialist. My point was that the idea that history is a science is one that, as a serious concept held among professional historians, perished a long time ago.



You are relying in a controversy that is decades old

That is because your positions mirrors one of the sides of that decades old controversy; and the side that lost, and in my opinion, comprehensively so.




I got my degree a quarter century after Elton published his book, and he was never influential in my formation as a historian.

And I got my degree nearly half a century after Elton published his book, whats your point?



But, according to you, History is not a science, but can be studied?

Fine art, music and literature can be studied; you aren't purporting that literary criticsm, for example, is a science are you?


What do we study in History, if we aren't trying to increase our knowledge of History in a systematical way?

Opinions, past and present, and then make an eductated guess at which contains a grain of eternal truth.


History, in such respect, is no different from physics of biology.

What you mean other than in the fact that it is not an experimental science because absolutely nothing about history, short of the physical testing on the paper sources are written on, can be tested in controlled conditions?



You are wrong - aether has not been "conclusively disproved".

Quite right, I shall correct myself; aether doesn't exist because there is no evidence for it and there are other theories that render the idea of aether obsolite. The same cannot be said of a historical idea that can only be supported by argument alone.



Of course you can - you have to pitch them against the available data.

The available 'data' is nothing more than unreliable pre-selected opinion. For example, to continue with the appeasment issue, one could take the Churchill memoirs as an account of what occured; but what Churchill recorded in his memoirs a. didn't necessarily occur; b. isn't complete, leaving certain possibly important pieces of information missing; c. wasn't necessarily as important or unimportant as the author made out, etc.

So in short, the data is simply what someone has left for you, it is incomplete and inevitably biased. You can't hope to measure it with any degree of accuracy, which is why your results will inevitably your personal opinion; as opposed to a proven absolute truth.

Consider it like a jigsaw puzzle; in which half of the pieces are missing and you have no cover picture to work with. Oh and a lot of the pieces are from a different puzzle. A historian is expected to take these pieces and put them together as best they can and then use conjecture to fill in the rest of the puzzle. History differs in that the possible pieces to this puzzle are near infinate, most of the ones you have found came out of different boxes and more than half of them are missing. However there is a correct origional picture; its just that a historian will never get it exactly the same. Maybe closely resembling the orgional, but never the exact origional.

Incidentally, that example is one I paraphrased and modified from Evans.


But you cannot also "test" physical hypothesis about the origin of the universe

But of course you can to a degree, you can for example, examine the speed in which the universe expands and conject how long ago it formed and that is the basis of many of the theories.


Your conception of science is still a XIX century positivist view.

Actually my position is somewhere in between the naive empiricism of the mid 20th century and the post-modernist trend in the 1980's. In Defence of History, the book whose views I sympathise with the most thus far, was written in 1997 and the version I have with an extensive afterword came out in 2000. It was written in part as a reaction to the assult on the historical profession by post-modernism and as a bridge builder between the words Eltons and Carrs. So, as far as epochs in historiography go, my views reflect the current epoch; I am afraid yours don't. But its nice to know you weren't taken in by the post-modernists; but unfortunately you seem to have been taken in by the other extreme.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 29, 2007 01:59 am
Well, it is a noticable trend that leftwing historians take one side; conservatives take the other. However, that wasn't my point as Carr was no socialist. My point was that the idea that history is a science is one that, as a serious concept held among professional historians, perished a long time ago.
That's quite curious. If this is true for the American academy, I would say that it puts it at odds with the rest of the world.

Most historians that I know believe that History is a science. The contrary opinion is certainly minoritary, and, quite frankly, not taken in serious.


That is because your positions mirrors one of the sides of that decades old controversy; and the side that lost, and in my opinion, comprehensively so.

I think you are confusing things. Nobody holds the positivist concept of History nowadays - or nobody that is important in the field, at least. But also nobody takes the positivist concept of science in serious any more, in any field. The Carr/Elton polemic seems to have been about Elton's positivist positions; he was a Rankeite, and a clearly epigonal one. But Elton's take on History is precisely anti-scientific, with his emphasis in great personalities and decisive events. He was a defender of what we call hero-battle-History, and this was outdated even before he started writing.

The discussion about the scientific status of History is a quite different one.



I got my degree a quarter century after Elton published his book, and he was never influential in my formation as a historian.

And I got my degree nearly half a century after Elton published his book, whats your point?

That you are trying to conflate my position with Elton's, while they are certainly quite different.


What you mean other than in the fact that it is not an experimental science because absolutely nothing about history, short of the physical testing on the paper sources are written on, can be tested in controlled conditions?

I mean that knowledge in experimental sciences is not linearly cumulative, just knowledge in History isn't. Einstein's physics is not just an extension of Newton's; it directly contradicts many Newtonian premises.


Quite right, I shall correct myself; aether doesn't exist because there is no evidence for it and there are other theories that render the idea of aether obsolite.

We don't know whether aether exists or not; at the present state of physical knowledge, it does not seem a plausible hypothesis. But the real point is that the dereliction of aether is not due to its existence being disproved, but by the unnecessity of the hypothesis.


The same cannot be said of a historical idea that can only be supported by argument alone.

I think you are wrong here. Taking your example of A. J. P. Taylor's reaprisal of appeasement (which was far from attaining the consensus you seem to attribute to it), to the extent that it was directed towards the naïve idea that appeasement was a mistake imposed by wicked, or stupid, men onto an unwilling nation, there is no chance that it can be reversed. We know now, for certain, that appeasement was a policy that corresponded to certain interests within the English ruling class, and a policy that consciously sought to attain certain results.

However, appeasement was also a policy that set itself its conditions of success. It should have attained "peace in our time", or at least induced Germany to war against the Soviet Union, instead of against the western democracies. As such, it failed by its own criteria (and the feeble attempts to justify it as a way to gain time for British rearming cannot account for the fact that Germany was earnestly rebuilding its military, much more than Britain).

I don't see how you can argue that we haven't today a better comprehension of this issue than we had in the sixties (and that we hadn't a better comprehension in the sixties than in the fifties).



Of course you can - you have to pitch them against the available data.

The available 'data' is nothing more than unreliable pre-selected opinion. For example, to continue with the appeasment issue, one could take the Churchill memoirs as an account of what occured; but what Churchill recorded in his memoirs a. didn't necessarily occur; b. isn't complete, leaving certain possibly important pieces of information missing; c. wasn't necessarily as important or unimportant as the author made out, etc.

Evidently. The data don't speak by themselves more in History than in Physics. You are again battling the windmills of positivism.

The work of any serious historian is to understand why Churchill wrote what he wrote, to what interests did that correspond, etc.

And, oh. Churchill's memoirs are already a secondary source; the raw material are the memoranda, the newspapers, the letters, etc., of the time - which also must be criticised.


So in short, the data is simply what someone has left for you, it is incomplete and inevitably biased. You can't hope to measure it with any degree of accuracy, which is why your results will inevitably your personal opinion; as opposed to a proven absolute truth.

To a proven absolute truth nobody can aspire, not even biologists or physicists.



But you cannot also "test" physical hypothesis about the origin of the universe

But of course you can to a degree, you can for example, examine the speed in which the universe expands and conject how long ago it formed and that is the basis of many of the theories.

Yes, if you believe that the speed of univers expansion is constant or changes at a constant rate, you can make such conjecture. But we don't know if such speed is constant or not, and cannot in any way conceive an experiment that can test such hypothesis.



Your conception of science is still a XIX century positivist view.

Actually my position is somewhere in between the naive empiricism of the mid 20th century and the post-modernist trend in the 1980's. In Defence of History, the book whose views I sympathise with the most thus far, was written in 1997 and the version I have with an extensive afterword came out in 2000. It was written in part as a reaction to the assult on the historical profession by post-modernism and as a bridge builder between the words Eltons and Carrs. So, as far as epochs in historiography go, my views reflect the current epoch; I am afraid yours don't. But its nice to know you weren't taken in by the post-modernists; but unfortunately you seem to have been taken in by the other extreme.

I would say that your views tend a lot in the direction of post-modernism in what it concerns History, but that you seem to have an outdated conception of science. If your views of History are post-modern, while your views of "hard" science are positivist, evidently you cannot consider History as a science. In other words, you seem to have bended to both extremes simultaneously, which is not a true centrist position...

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

If this is true for the American academy, I would say that it puts it at odds with the rest of the world.

It is not true of just American academia but most academia full stop.



Most historians that I know believe that History is a science.

Really? Well, as I currently attend university studing history at post-graduate level I must say my own experiences greatly differ on that score. perhaps you confuse the fact that historians reglarly describe their methods as scientific, rather than their results?



I think you are confusing things. Nobody holds the positivist concept of History nowadays

I am not describing a positivist position but a loosely relativist one; though certainly not even approaching the hyper-relativism of post-modernism.


But Elton's take on History is precisely anti-scientific

It depends on the context. In his approach to history; great man history, which diametrically opposes structuralism and functionalism, I would agree. However he did hold with the idea that history is at essance a science; and with enough research a historian could become "ever nearer to the fortress of truth"; (Elton, 'Return to Essencials', in 'The Postmodern History Reader' Keith Jenkins (ed.))

In that sense Elton was a leading proponent of the 'history is based upon empiricism and thus is a science' crowd.



That you are trying to conflate my position with Elton's, while they are certainly quite different.

The have parellels.


We know now, for certain,

This is where I think you are wrong; we don't know that for certain, we simply suspect it, because current interpritation of the sources suggest it. We cannot be certain, in the absolute, ever.



I don't see how you can argue that we haven't today a better comprehension of this issue than we had in the sixties

Simple, modern scholarly interpretation could be wrong, and opinion from the 60's unlikely though it maybe could be correct, and as we have no way of going back to the past we will never know for sure.



The work of any serious historian is to understand why Churchill wrote what he wrote, to what interests did that correspond, etc.

That is the job of the historian who delves into psychoanalysis of historical figures, not necessarily the political historian who is interested not in the motives of Churchill's memoir writing but rather the appeasment policy its self.



To a proven absolute truth nobody can aspire, not even biologists or physicists.

Of course they can, it is for example, an absolute proof that if one jumps on planet Earth they will drop. Thus we can be sure of the effects of earths gravity and I defy anyone to attempt to prove me wrong by jumping from a 100ft building. As said, there is no objective way to prove a single historical theory because we cannot go back and test it. We can be sure, so sure that we take it as fact, that the battle of Waterloo was in 1815; but we cannot go back to make sure. You can jump up and down to prove that there is a force that pulls you back to earth.


I would say that your views tend a lot in the direction of post-modernism in what it concerns History, but that you seem to have an outdated conception of science.

It is the same question. Either history is a science and deals with objective empirical data and produces objective results, or it doesn't. Either it is derived, at least partially, through unscientific interpritation of subjective sources or it is not.

As for saying that I support post-modernist approaches to history; akin to those of Keith Jenkins, sorry but that is nonsense.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 29, 2007 03:46 am
Really? Well, as I currently attend university studing history at post-graduate level I must say my own experiences greatly differ on that score. perhaps you confuse the fact that historians reglarly describe their methods as scientific, rather than their results?
But science is a method, not a result!



That you are trying to conflate my position with Elton's, while they are certainly quite different.

The have parellels.

No, they are completely different. Elton believed in absolute truth, and I don't; Elton believed that once the "facts" are established beyond doubt, they speak for themselves, while I don't believe it possible to establish "facts" beyond doubt, nor that they speak for themselves.



We know now, for certain,

This is where I think you are wrong; we don't know that for certain, we simply suspect it, because current interpritation of the sources suggest it. We cannot be certain, in the absolute, ever.

So do you think it is possible that Chamberlain and Halifax simply mislead Britain into a wrong policy, out of sheer ignorance?

Well, it is - as it is also possible that there is aether, after all... but the chances are, in both cases, ridiculously small.



The work of any serious historian is to understand why Churchill wrote what he wrote, to what interests did that correspond, etc.

That is the job of the historian who delves into psychoanalysis of historical figures, not necessarily the political historian who is interested not in the motives of Churchill's memoir writing but rather the appeasment policy its self.

I am sorry, I can't see what does the criticism of Churchill as a source has to do with psychoanalysis.



To a proven absolute truth nobody can aspire, not even biologists or physicists.

Of course they can, it is for example, an absolute proof that if one jumps on planet Earth they will drop.

Er - that is wrong. There is an overwhelming chance that this will happen, but not an absolute certainty. Besides, even that overwhelming chance is calculated taking for granted that our knowledge of how gravity functions is absolutely accurate, which is probably not.


Thus we can be sure of the effects of earths gravity and I defy anyone to attempt to prove me wrong by jumping from a 100ft building. As said, there is no objective way to prove a single historical theory because we cannot go back and test it. We can be sure, so sure that we take it as fact, that the battle of Waterloo was in 1815; but we cannot go back to make sure. You can jump up and down to prove that there is a force that pulls you back to earth.

There are thousands of documents that tell us that there was a battle in Waterloo in a certain date, and no documents that say otherwise. Unless we believe in a huge conspiracy to mislead us about the date of such battle, we should believe such sources. And, of course, if we go that mad, it isn't that difficult to go a little bit further, and believe that there is an angelical conspiracy to push objects down to Earth, in order to make humans thing there is something such as gravity...


It is the same question. Either history is a science and deals with objective empirical data and produces objective results, or it doesn't. Either it is derived, at least partially, through unscientific interpritation of subjective sources or it is not.


You see, you adhere to a conception of science that is outdated. Results are always subjective; experiences are designed by scientists who are subjective; observation interferes with the observed phenomena; theories are abstract constructs of human beings, not impositions of the facts.


As for saying that I support post-modernist approaches to history; akin to those of Keith Jenkins, sorry but that is nonsense.

Oh yes. You don't think there is progress in History, you believe that outdated theories may be as valid as the state of art. This implies a degree of relativism that is incompatible with serious research in the field.

Luís Henrique

[lombas]

I'm now in my master's year in history, and I am deeply convinced history is nót a science.

I wrote about this:


De moderne geschiedschrijving ambiëert niet naar de essentie van geschiedkundige feiten te grijpen - de historiografie toont enkel het moderniseren van de feiten: is de geest van Thucydides verdwenen? Het is alsof de biologie enkel naar de mens zou kijken en zich niet zou afvragen uit wat die bestaat; enkel zou optekenen hoe een arm eruit ziet, en niet hoe die werkt. Het is een gebrek aan kennis - te weten wát mensen dachten, waarom ze handelden - dat het denken van de historicus bederft.

Misschien is het wel volledig onmogelijk, en wordt geschiedenis als wetenschap gereduceerd tot de typiste die duizenden woorden ként maar haar schrijfsels niet absorbeert of weet wie aan het dicteren is. Onze wetenschap faalt grotendeels, wat we enkel trachten te compenseren door boeiende boeken met een snufje romantiek te schrijven.

Schrijven kunnen we. Maar bouw je daar een wetenschap mee op?

Translation (fast):

The modern historiography does not want to grasp the essence of historical facts - it only shows the modernization of those facts: has the spirit of Thucydides disappeared? It is as if biology would only look at man and not wonder of what he is built, or would only describe how an arm looks like, but not how it functions. It is a lack of knowledge - to know what people thought, why they acted the way they did - that blurs the mind of the historian.

It might be completely impossible, and history as a science might be reduced to a typist who knows thousands of words but does not understand the full meaning of all the letters she types or who's dictating them. Our science fails, which we try to compensate by writing interesting books with a bit of romance.

We can write. But can you build a science with that?

[Invader Zim]

But science is a method, not a result!

Really? I disagree, and so does the dictionary:

1: the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
2 a: a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study <the science of theology> b: something (as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge <have it down to a science>
3 a: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method b: such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena : natural science
4: a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws <cooking is both a science and an art>
5capitalized : christian science

The simple fact is that historians employ a scientific approach to the collection of their sources and employ methods, such as comparative methodology, that employ strict scientific rules. However, even the raw material of the historian is subjective in nature; thus the outcome is univerally subjective.


Elton believed in absolute truth

Having read some of his works I never go that impression. He certainly believed that the truth was &#39;out there&#39;, but he certainly wasn&#39;t naive enough to think that he could ever fully capture the &#39;fortress of truth&#39;, though he certainly believed with prodigious research one could approach it.



So do you think it is possible that Chamberlain and Halifax simply mislead Britain into a wrong policy, out of sheer ignorance?

Without being able to go back in time and question them, any conclusion is concievably possible; just ulikely.



Well, it is - as it is also possible that there is aether, after all... but the chances are, in both cases, ridiculously small.

Considering there are tests to support, or diminish, the possibility that aether exists and there are none for history; the ratio of probability is vastly different - small though it maybe in both cases.



I am sorry, I can&#39;t see what does the criticism of Churchill as a source has to do with psychoanalysis.

Well, as it is obvious that you haven&#39;t been keeping up with developments in historiography, that coesn&#39;t come as a huge supprise.



Er - that is wrong.

Well, in that case take up my challenge.


Unless we believe in a huge conspiracy to mislead us about the date of such battle, we should believe such sources.

Of course, but we cannot actually test it or any other historical conclusion. We can test the theory behind gravity by simply dropping items.

And of course in the case of Waterloo it is very basic, the more complicated the question the greater the need for opinion. For example, did the German people know that the holocaust - as in genocide - was occuring? Sources utterly conflict and the historian simply has to make an educated guess.



You see, you adhere to a conception of science that is outdated.

And you have a conception of history that is out dated.


Results are always subjective

Not so. That a stone falls if dropped from five feet above the earths surface is an objective phenomenon; it either occured or it did not (and short of going into a philosophical debate, there is no arguing with that). A historian does not deal with such absolutes; they consider what is most likely to have happened, formulate an argument and produce, in their eyes, a plausable argument.


Oh yes. You don&#39;t think there is progress in History, you believe that outdated theories may be as valid as the state of art. This implies a degree of relativism that is incompatible with serious research in the field.

That says more about your understanding, or lack of, than it does about my actual position.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 29, 2007 01:02 pm

Elton believed in absolute truth

Having read some of his works I never go that impression. He certainly believed that the truth was &#39;out there&#39;, but he certainly wasn&#39;t naive enough to think that he could ever fully capture the &#39;fortress of truth&#39;, though he certainly believed with prodigious research one could approach it.
Oh, certainly positivists can understand that it is humanely impossible to "capture the fortress of truth" - but they believe there is such "fortress" in the objective world. They believe in Laplace&#39;s demon as a possibility, not as a fact, nor they necessarily believe that mankind can be such demon.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 29, 2007 01:02 pm

But science is a method, not a result&#33;

Really? I disagree, and so does the dictionary:

1: the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
This is a vulgar acception of the word, and obviously isn&#39;t what you mean when you say that "History is not a science".


2 a: a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study <the science of theology>

This is also not what you mean when you say that "History is not a science". And by such definition, it is clear that History in fact is a science.


b: something (as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge <have it down to a science>

This is again a vulgar acception, and under this definition there isn&#39;t much difference between History and natural science.


3 a: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method

See, this definition relies fundamentally on the "method" (and is therefor circular: "science" is whatever uses "scientific method"). If we take out the "method" part, there is no reason to disconsider Astrology as a science - it is a "system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws".


b: such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena : natural science

Here we would have a petitio principii: History is not a science because we define "science" as liminarly excluding History.


4: a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws <cooking is both a science and an art>

This is again a vulgar acception, under which neither History neither natural sciences would qualify: it seems to be related only to applied science, such as Engineering, Medicine, or Law.


5capitalized : christian science

Oh well...

As you see, your dictionary gives us seven different acceptions of the word science.

Under two of them (1., 2a.), History is uncontroversially a science.

Under three of them (2b., 4., 5), History is not a science... but neither are Physics, Chemistry or Biology.

One of them (3a) is circular; if we take out the circular clause, History is certainly a science. If we don&#39;t, the definition, besides being circular, relies exactly on method to define science, so it does not support your assertion.

This leaves us definition 3b, which defines "science" as hard science, or natural science, and as such excludes History. But it begs the question...

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

See, this definition relies fundamentally on the "method" (and is therefor circular: "science" is whatever uses "scientific method"). If we take out the "method" part, there is no reason to disconsider Astrology as a science - it is a "system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws".

But it certainly does not imply that they are one and the same; which is what you claimed.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 30, 2007 05:53 pm

See, this definition relies fundamentally on the "method" (and is therefor circular: "science" is whatever uses "scientific method"). If we take out the "method" part, there is no reason to disconsider Astrology as a science - it is a "system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws".

But it certainly does not imply that they are one and the same; which is what you claimed.
I should have written, "the difference between a discipline that is a science, and one that is not, resides in their respective methods."

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+December 01, 2007 11:28 am--> (Luís Henrique @ December 01, 2007 11:28 am)
Invader [email protected] 30, 2007 05:53 pm

See, this definition relies fundamentally on the "method" (and is therefor circular: "science" is whatever uses "scientific method"). If we take out the "method" part, there is no reason to disconsider Astrology as a science - it is a "system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws".

But it certainly does not imply that they are one and the same; which is what you claimed.
I should have written, "the difference between a discipline that is a science, and one that is not, resides in their respective methods."

Luís Henrique [/b]
Brief question, which methods do you consider in history to be &#39;scientific&#39;?

[Luís Henrique]

The scientific method consists of formulating hypothesis to explain reality, then confronting the available results with the hypothetical predictions. As long as the hypothesis is not contradicted by the results, it stands; when it is no longer compatible with the results, it is disproved, and new hypothesis must be formulated to replace it.

Hypothesis that cannot be falsified by empirical observation are unscientific, and must be liminarly discarded.

History proceeds like that, and as such is a science. The only difference is that we cannot produce results ad libitum. But this issue is also true for parts of Physics (cosmology), Geology, and parts of Biology (evolutionary theory).

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 29, 2007 01:02 pm

So do you think it is possible that Chamberlain and Halifax simply mislead Britain into a wrong policy, out of sheer ignorance?

Without being able to go back in time and question them, any conclusion is concievably possible; just ulikely.
So there is a hierarchy of "likelyhood" among historical hypothesis, do you agree? What is the foundation of such hierarchy? How do you know that it is less likely that Britain was simply mislead into appeasement by the Cliveden group, than that the appeasement policy corresponded to some political interests among the British bourgeoisie, which were consciously pursued until practiced proved they would be disastrous to the British State as a whole?



I am sorry, I can&#39;t see what does the criticism of Churchill as a source has to do with psychoanalysis.

Well, as it is obvious that you haven&#39;t been keeping up with developments in historiography, that coesn&#39;t come as a huge supprise.

You know what critique of source is, don&#39;t you?


Of course, but we cannot actually test it or any other historical conclusion. We can test the theory behind gravity by simply dropping items.

The test of a historical hypothesis is confronting it with the available documents.


And of course in the case of Waterloo it is very basic, the more complicated the question the greater the need for opinion. For example, did the German people know that the holocaust - as in genocide - was occuring? Sources utterly conflict and the historian simply has to make an educated guess.

If the sources conflict, we must weigh them, understand what reasons would led some of them to take one position, and others to take the opposite position.

We know that it was in the interest of most of the German populace after the war to deny any knowledge of the genocide. So we must take claims of ignorance with some caution. On the other hand, we have plenty of documents - letter, post cards, photographs - showing that SS and Wehrmacht soldiers actually told people in the rearguard about what was happening. Besides, the Wehrmacht was not a professional army like the US Army nowadays; it was an army of conscripts, so practically every family in Germany had close relatives fighting in the war. So the scientifical analysis of the issue seems to point that some degree of knowledge did exist and was generalised among the German populace.

Luís Henrique

[mikelepore]

There must be some room for scientific methods in studying history if it&#39;s possible to learn anything from history. Otherwise no one could make a conclusion from it. Most of us would admit that at least some conclusions can be learned, for example, let&#39;s say we have learned this generalization: if a political leader of society says to the people, "Give me unlimited power so I will be free to achieve great things -- make me a dictator and I promise you won&#39;t regret it." -- don&#39;t do it&#33; Don&#39;t do it, because we have learned that such a proposal leads to a disaster. But how can we have formed this conclusion? It it was possible to learn any such generalization, it must be possible to take a large mass of raw data and recognize the recurrent patterns in them. That activity is precisely what science is. We are at a primitive state when we attempt to do it with very complex systems, and very good at doing it with simple systems, but it&#39;s still the same process of sorting raw data to look for the generalizations.

[Luís Henrique]

I would also like to see some evidence that E. H. Carr believed History is not a science.

Luís Henrique

[bezdomni]

I read somewhere that the word for scientist in german can apply to a historian as much as it can a physicist.

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by Luís [email protected] 03, 2007 03:04 am
I would also like to see some evidence that E. H. Carr believed History is not a science.

Luís Henrique
I have already given you a full reference to the necessary reading material. You are either going to have to take my word for it or buy/steal/borrow the book; because while I certainly enjoy our occassional discussions; I really have not got the time to, and undoubtedly poorly, paraphrase a 150+ page book.



So there is a hierarchy of "likelyhood" among historical hypothesis, do you agree?

In some cases; but for a fair portion of the time weighing the validity of the opinion of various experts in the field comes down to little more than personal preference; and such preference is certainly not based on any kind of scientific basis or standard; it is truly personal.



You know what critique of source is, don&#39;t you?

Indeed I do; but more to the point, do you? Understanding the author of a souce is as important, if not more so, that what the author has to say. It, after all, governs what the author chooses to include, and just as importantly, what not to include.



The test of a historical hypothesis is confronting it with the available documents.

But as noted the available sources are bias interpretation of contemporary events and nothing more; not to mention that most of them are lost, incomplete, etc. In short it is nothing more than the subjective analysis of the subjective; opinion on opinion.


we must weigh them

Which in its self is purely a matter of personal perspective; which is entirely subjective and based on no scientific standard. For example, marxist historians have traditionally had a rather embarrising trend of underestimating female influence upon historical events (as E. P. Thompson himself accepted, (Matt Perry, Marxism and History, (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 102). Conservatives tend to underestimate the influence from below. Greatman historians, structural influences. Structuralists ignore the influence of individuals; etc.


understand what reasons would led some of them to take one position, and others to take the opposite position.

A task which is equally based upon subjective interpetation of subjective material as above.



We know that it was in the interest of most of the German populace after the war to deny any knowledge of the genocide. So we must take claims of ignorance with some caution. On the other hand, we have plenty of documents - letter, post cards, photographs - showing that SS and Wehrmacht soldiers actually told people in the rearguard about what was happening.

I see Daniel Goldhagen&#39;s views have even infected Rev Left; how sad. For one so convinced by the sources, you take a rather ahistoric view of this matter. The sources, while certainly not unanimously, show a story of ignorance and self denial; it would seem unlikely that the German people really were &#39;Hitler&#39;s willing executioners&#39;. However the point is not that the Goldhagens of the profession are &#39;wrong&#39;, but rather they produce arguments, that in light of the conflicting evidence, do not seem as good as others.


So the scientifical analysis of the issue seems to point that some degree of knowledge did exist and was generalised among the German populace.

Few historians accept the Goldhagen view of the subject, which mirrors the one you are producing. Indeed the ones that do tend to be young German historians determined to damn and disassociate themselves from their parents/grand parents; guess why. Incidentally, i have noticed this trend among German students in my university; not just among my historiographical reading.


I read somewhere that the word for scientist in german can apply to a historian as much as it can a physicist.

My knowledge of the German language is that of a true novice, however as I understand it that is not really the case.

The word scientist translates to naturwissenschaftler, while science is naturwissenschaft. Wissenschaftler, means academic or scholar. So in reality the German word for academic can apply to a historian; naturwissenschaftler, or scientist, cannot. History its self is Geschichtswissenschaft.

Of course a German speaking member can probably rip my feeble understanding of the language to shreds; but that is as it has been explained to me by a German colleague and any errors are my fault rather than his.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 03, 2007 04:20 am
But as noted the available sources are bias interpretation of contemporary events and nothing more; not to mention that most of them are lost, incomplete, etc. In short it is nothing more than the subjective analysis of the subjective; opinion on opinion.
Not so.

Churchill opinions about Second World War are of course subjective; the fact that he wrote them in the way that he did isn&#39;t.

And not all sources are subjective. What&#39;s subjective in the Komissarbefehl? What is subjective in Westmoreland saying that Vietnamese people don&#39;t value life as Westerners do? (oh, well, it was his opinion, but such opinion can&#39;t be even taken into consideration - the important fact is that at least some of the American commanders in Vietnam espoused racist ideas about the people they were purportedly defending, and I don&#39;t see how this is subjective)



we must weigh them

Which in its self is purely a matter of personal perspective; which is entirely subjective and based on no scientific standard.

Not so, of course. Sources are contradictory; sources say absurd things; sources do obviously pander to the interests of their groups. Which source has more credibility, an American general saying that there was no torture at Abu Ghraib, or the photographs of such torture? Would you say it is just a matter of personal perspective? Come on.


For example, marxist historians have traditionally had a rather embarrising trend of underestimating female influence upon historical events (as E. P. Thompson himself accepted, (Matt Perry, Marxism and History, (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 102). Conservatives tend to underestimate the influence from below. Greatman historians, structural influences. Structuralists ignore the influence of individuals; etc.


Yet those are valid criticisms, not matters of personal opinion. If Marxists in fact underestimate female influence upon historical events, this makes the History they write less accurate, and less scientific than if they didn&#39;t - not just "different", "personal", "subjective", but indeed inferior in its veracity.



We know that it was in the interest of most of the German populace after the war to deny any knowledge of the genocide. So we must take claims of ignorance with some caution. On the other hand, we have plenty of documents - letter, post cards, photographs - showing that SS and Wehrmacht soldiers actually told people in the rearguard about what was happening.

I see Daniel Goldhagen&#39;s views have even infected Rev Left; how sad.

So, those photographs don&#39;t exist? Those letters don&#39;t exist?

(and you are wrong; the source of "infection" here isn&#39;t Goldhagen, but Omer Bartov.)

And how can you, from your point of view, deplore Goldhagen? If everything is subjective, what difference is there between Goldhagen and Irving?


For one so convinced by the sources, you take a rather ahistoric view of this matter. The sources, while certainly not unanimously, show a story of ignorance and self denial

Oh, certainly - but "self denial" is something far different from "ignorance"; in fact, it implies the repression of the knowledge of something. If the German people in fact ignored the genocide of their Jewish compatriots (but how would they, when their children in the front were telling them it was happening?), there would be no self denial.


it would seem unlikely that the German people really were &#39;Hitler&#39;s willing executioners&#39;. However the point is not that the Goldhagens of the profession are &#39;wrong&#39;, but rather they produce arguments, that in light of the conflicting evidence, do not seem as good as others.

The problem with Goldhagen - as far as I can talk about the problems of an author that I didn&#39;t read - is that his interpretation is too much one-sided. He has an ax to grind, and doesn&#39;t take enough care about this fact to avoid his ax from hurting himself. But evidently no one rules for a dozen years, half of them of brutal external war, over a people if there isn&#39;t at least some tolerance of such rule from those subject to it.


Few historians accept the Goldhagen view of the subject, which mirrors the one you are producing.

Let me again dissociate from this, if I haven&#39;t done it enough. I haven&#39;t read Goldhagen, and I can&#39;t be mirroring his views here. I am pointing to the fact that the evidence we have seems to show that there was disseminated knowledge about the genocide among the German populace. What the Germans did with such knowledge (to enthusiastically support the atrocities, or to try and hide them from themselves out of shame or fear) is a different issue. But the idea that they didn&#39;t know that something awful was happening to their Jewish neighbours is too naive. After all, they knew enough about T4 to effectively stop it; and even the deportation of some Jewish Germans was cancelled after protests of their "aryan" wives.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 03, 2007 04:20 am
I have already given you a full reference to the necessary reading material. You are either going to have to take my word for it or buy/steal/borrow the book; because while I certainly enjoy our occassional discussions; I really have not got the time to, and undoubtedly poorly, paraphrase a 150+ page book.
Let me put this clearly. I have read the book, albeit some twenty years ago, and I repute it as one of the main sources of my comprehension of historic method. I don&#39;t remember ever having the impression that Carr ever suggested that History is not a science. So maybe, just maybe, he effectively never wrote such.

So, I am not asking you to paraphrase a 150 page book. I am asking you for a direct quote, that can be interpreted, without forcing its meaning, as supportive of the idea that History is not a science.

In other words, I am asking you to contradict yourself: to put up historical evidence that can establish, as a fact, not as a matter of opinion, that E. H. Carr believed History is not a science. If you can&#39;t, I will cling to the "opinion" that he didn&#39;t. If you can, I will grant you that he did - but will point you that you will have just done what you say it is impossible to do, and proven both you and Carr wrong.

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

And not all sources are subjective.

Of course they are; they are all written in a manner, include certain information and excude other information for various purposes; Hitler&#39;s orders to his general on the Eastern front is no exception.


Which source has more credibility, an American general saying that there was no torture at Abu Ghraib, or the photographs of such torture?

Ultimately, without visiting at the time it occured, it is impossible to say diffinatively. However; while one may be able to see that the General is either lying or is mistaken, the issue of the photos is also wide open to debate regarding the degree of the torture, how wide spread it was, etc. At this point the credibility of the sources become far less obvious.


If Marxists in fact underestimate female influence upon historical events, this makes the History they write less accurate

Indeed, but at what point are female, male, working class, ruling class, stuctural, etc, factors stated to the degree that they are over-estimations or are still understated? That is entirely a matter of opinion. It is also a matter of opinion that historians very rarely unanmously agree about because it is entirely a subjective matter. You can pick up a historical journal and read the review section and be near sure to quickly find an article lamenting that Historian A has not taken enough account of Factor X and over-estimated Factor Y.



So, those photographs don&#39;t exist? Those letters don&#39;t exist?

Of course they exist, I have read translaions of some of them. However, the issue is not whether they exist but whether they existed in enough numbers and were distributed widely enough to give the German populous even a vague idea of how wide spread the holocaust was and on what a large scale the holocaust was.



(and you are wrong; the source of "infection" here isn&#39;t Goldhagen, but Omer Bartov.)

I&#39;ve never read him, but I am reliably informed that he writes a load of intentionalist drivel.


If everything is subjective, what difference is there between Goldhagen and Irving?

Goldhagen is a poor historian; Irving is a racist charlatan and no historian at all. What Irving did was to make up facts and attribute them to the sources; it wasn&#39;t a case of subjective interpretation of sources but downright lying about them. But now you mention it Lucy S. Dawidowicz once compared, and very harshly in my opinion, the position of Hans Mommsen with that of Irving in The war Against the Jews: 1933-1945, (Hamondsworth, 1987), introduction page XXV. So it is not like historians do not ask such questions and make such comparisons.



And how can you, from your point of view, deplore Goldhagen?

Because he makes a bad argument. Of course he could be correct, his interpritation of the heavily selected sources he chose maybe the the correct one; but I doubt it.


I can&#39;t be mirroring his views here.

Simply because you haven&#39;t read the book, probably the most famous of that particular ilk, doesn&#39;t necessarily mean that you haven&#39;t inadvertantly produced a simililar mirroring argument.


But the idea that they didn&#39;t know that something awful was happening to their Jewish neighbours is too naive.

Now that is a different question. It seems that they did know that Jews were being maltreated, after Kristallnacht that much must have been obvious. But there is a significant difference between the majority of the populous knowing that the Jews were being treated poorly and knowing that six million of Europes jews were being systematically murdered in numerous death camps located across Poland. The sources show that the German population was aware that there were rumours of such things circulating, but that is exactly what they considered them to be; just unbelievable rumours. T4 differs from the bulk of the holocaust in that it actually happened to Germans, the majority of murdered Jews were not German and the German jews were the very last to murdered and, in the case of T4, it was being committed by German civillians, doctors and nurses.

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+December 03, 2007 12:59 pm--> (Luís Henrique @ December 03, 2007 12:59 pm)
Invader [email protected] 03, 2007 04:20 am
I have already given you a full reference to the necessary reading material. You are either going to have to take my word for it or buy/steal/borrow the book; because while I certainly enjoy our occassional discussions; I really have not got the time to, and undoubtedly poorly, paraphrase a 150+ page book.
Let me put this clearly. I have read the book, albeit some twenty years ago, and I repute it as one of the main sources of my comprehension of historic method. I don&#39;t remember ever having the impression that Carr ever suggested that History is not a science. So maybe, just maybe, he effectively never wrote such.

So, I am not asking you to paraphrase a 150 page book. I am asking you for a direct quote, that can be interpreted, without forcing its meaning, as supportive of the idea that History is not a science.

In other words, I am asking you to contradict yourself: to put up historical evidence that can establish, as a fact, not as a matter of opinion, that E. H. Carr believed History is not a science. If you can&#39;t, I will cling to the "opinion" that he didn&#39;t. If you can, I will grant you that he did - but will point you that you will have just done what you say it is impossible to do, and proven both you and Carr wrong.

Luís Henrique [/b]

I don&#39;t remember ever having the impression that Carr ever suggested that History is not a science.

I suggest it is time for a re-read from page 56 to page 80, in which Carr judges the arguments for and against considering history a science; his eventual conclusion laments that there is a large &#39;rift&#39; between the sciences and history and he offers solutions in order to reduce the gap and suggesting it shouldn&#39;t be as wide as it unmistakeably is. Indeed one of his major points is that, unlike in the sciences a historian is subjective - setting it apart from the sciences; judging mans complexities from mans perspective. In other words, people investigating people, rather than observed through the independant observations of another species. As such Carr states that "history is shot through and through with relativity." p. 64. This of course fits in with the comments from the previous chapter of the book, "the historian is engaged on a continuous process of moulding his facts to his interpretation and his interpretation to his facts". p. 24. Indeed Carr&#39;s book is one lengthy attack on empiricism in history and sustained support for the idea of histories relativism. This of course puts it at odds with the sciences. Despite the fact that Carr doesn&#39;t necessarily think that the difference is as wide as many historians and philosophers want to make it out to be. As Carr notes on page 81, he is "not a natural scientist".

[bezdomni]

Of course history is a science. It isn&#39;t a science "just like" physics, but neither is chemistry or zoology. History, however, is a science. This is like...the fundamental assumption of Marxism...and I don&#39;t think it is possible to dismiss the science of history and still consider yourself a Marxist in any meaningful way.

The history of humanity cannot be abstracted from the history of nature - the two are innately linked, and the history of humanity always has and always will depend entirely on the history and future of nature. In essence, the history of humans is a part of the history of nature.


Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.
[Marx, Private Property and Communism]


“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist. The history of nature, called natural science, does not concern us here; but we will have to examine the history of men, since almost the whole ideology amounts either to a distorted conception of this history or to a complete abstraction from it. Ideology is itself only one of the aspects of this history.”
[Marx, On Feuerbach]


“But in the measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines, they no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece. So long as they look for science and merely make systems, so long as they are at the beginning of the struggle, they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society. From this moment, science, which is a product of the historical movement, has associated itself consciously with it, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.”
[Marx, Poverty of Philosophy]


“The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men&#39;s brains, not in men&#39;s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.”
[Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific] - Something you should definitely read if you haven&#39;t already. And even if you already have, you should probably re-read it.


“all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.”
[Marx, Capital Vol. III]

There are literally volumes of shit that Marx and Engels wrote that not only proves that history is a science, but makes use of it. Revolutionary politics are meaningless without the science of history. To dismiss that is incredibly stupid.

[ComradeRed]

I skimmed through most of the replies, and I must say that I am rather disappointed with this post. Some have noted that the motivation of the original post was to "prove" that MLM is a science (or scientific) as opposed to history (which is the title of the thread).

To do this, it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of science, for example:


Dictionaries define &#39;science&#39; in terms such as "a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study" and "knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method"[1]Science is more complex than this.

For example, the first definition given is vague enough to include astrology, alchemy, mathematics, and philosophy as sciences...which they aren&#39;t.

The second definition is flawed since science doesn&#39;t "cover general truths". Science is a culture of doubt, looking to falsify theories, rather than prove them.

Given these vague definitions, one could prove almost anything is a science.


My brief definition of science focuses on the most central element of scientific method, namely the testing of accepted facts and theories against reality. Meh, science doesn&#39;t really work this way though.

Science works through paradigms...tools used to analyze and explain problems.

The Newtonian paradigm gave way to the Lagrangian/Hamiltonian paradigm (which gave way to the relativistic Lagrangian/Hamiltonian paradigm which then gave way to the relativistic quantum field theoretic paradigm).

Marxism is a paradigm, as is Leninism inc. There are specific tool sets that Marxism uses, there are particular tool sets that Leninism uses.

What about the prominence of mathematics in science?

Biology, which is divisible into two "subfields" biochemistry and ecology, uses mathematics...viz. ecology uses nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory. Biochemistry and chemistry uses graph theory (Lewis dot diagrams or more generally molecular geometry), etc. Physics, well that&#39;s trivial.

As for those that say History is not a science, what about case studies? Or History and Mathematics (http://urss.ru/cgi-bin/db.pl?cp=&page=Book&id=53184&lang=en&blang=en&list=1)?

[Invader Zim]

SovietPants, I would choose scholars who died in the last century; if of course you want to be taken seriously in this subject. But, then again, when it comes to being taken seriously; you dont exactly set much of a trend.

Incidentally can this be moved to history?

[black magick hustla]

who cares about the philosophical implications of history anyway

[bezdomni]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 04, 2007 03:06 am
SovietPants, I would choose scholars who died in the last century; if of course you want to be taken seriously in this subject. But, then again, when it comes to being taken seriously; you dont exactly set much of a trend.

Incidentally can this be moved to history?
lol, so when people die is an indicator to how valid their theories are?

Not only is that profoundly stupid, it&#39;s also kind of weirdly morbid.

I make the accusation once again, that you don&#39;t understand Marxism. Your case that "history isn&#39;t a science" is everything but convincing, and runs completely contrary to the last century and a half of communist struggle and ideology.

To say that Marxism isn&#39;t a science because Marx died over a hundred years ago and that his contributions are irrelevant is like saying we shouldn&#39;t take Newton&#39;s laws of motion seriously anymore.

Way to completely dodge my argument, by the way.

If anything should not be taken seriously, it&#39;s your idealist garbage.

[Invader Zim]

lol, so when people die is an indicator to how valid their theories are?

Certainly, to a degree. Some ideas and approaches are of their period; the idea that history is a science is one of them. You take 19th century ideas on the subject and you can almost guarantee what they say before you&#39;ve read a line. However, ideas have changed somewhat; and for the better.



I make the accusation once again, that you don&#39;t understand Marxism.

Or maybe I understand it, and history, better than you.


and runs completely contrary to the last century and a half of communist struggle and ideology.

So what you are saying is that the theories that govern the best way to look at history cannot adapt and improve and that to suggest that they can is "completely contrary to the last century and a half of communist struggle and ideology"? I can see why you are not an Oxford Don.



To say that Marxism isn&#39;t a science because Marx died over a hundred years ago and that his contributions are irrelevant is like saying we shouldn&#39;t take Newton&#39;s laws of motion seriously anymore.

That, my simple friend, is not what I said. Try reading and challenging what I write; not a strawman you just pulled out of your imagination.

[bezdomni]

Certainly, to a degree. Some ideas and approaches are of their period; the idea that history is a science is one of them. You take 19th century ideas on the subject and you can almost guarantee what they say before you&#39;ve read a line. However, ideas have changed somewhat; and for the better.

Really? Marxism has changed since the lifetime of Marx? That seems to support my "Marxism is a science" argument.



Or maybe I understand it, and history, better than you.
I&#39;ve yet to see you demonstrate anything other than idealist abstractions, gross misunderstandings of Marx, and pretentious, condescending dismissal of people who disagree with you.

For example;

I can see why you are not an Oxford Don.

My response - Edited off, as it was incompatible with the level of debate we expect here (Luís Henrique)


So what you are saying is that the theories that govern the best way to look at history cannot adapt and improve and that to suggest that they can is "completely contrary to the last century and a half of communist struggle and ideology"?

No, what I am saying is that Marxism is a constantly changing and adapting science of history and society.

Obviously conditions have changed since the last century. They have changed since the last decade. Hell, they have changed since the last year&#33; That is why a scientific understanding of history is necessary, so we can account for these changes and understand them in a way that enables us to change the world in a radically different and liberating way.

Something you seem to profoundly misunderstand, because, as I have claimed and as you have proven for me - your analysis is mechanical and idealist. You are not a Marxist (although I have never seen you claim to be) in any meaningful way. Your politics are bourgeois liberalism at best, albiet somewhat to the "left" of the mainstream.


That, my simple friend, is not what I said. Try reading and challenging what I write; not a strawman you just pulled out of your imagination.

It&#39;s not what you said, but it&#39;s what you implied. Try actually demonstrating a logical argument, rather than making up bullshit and then accusing me of making a "strawman" for calling it out. What I actually did was deduce something absurd from what you said, because what you said is absurd.

[Invader Zim]

Marxism has changed since the lifetime of Marx? That seems to support my "Marxism is a science" argument.

So has fine art; is that a science?


Edited off stuff

Even your petty and, for more damningly, unimaginative insults cling to the 19th century. However, it is more important to note that the fact that you call me "bourgeois" shows a gross misunderstanding of class structure. It is typical of most idealistic adolescents with a desire to show off just how radical they, and their rhetoric are, yet lack the understanding to pull it off.

Paragraph edited off, as it was incompatible with the debate level we expect here.



No, what I am saying is that Marxism is a constantly changing and adapting science of history and society.

What you are saying is that Marx&#39;s ideas regarding the nature and status of history are not the product of their time; I am saying you should modernise your reading list.


Your politics are bourgeois liberalism at best, albiet somewhat to the "left" of the mainstream.

You are a truly rare gem; the way you can come across as being so pompus and self righteous, while at the same time invariably incorrect, is truly breath taking.


It&#39;s not what you said, but it&#39;s what you implied.
Paragraph edited off, as it was incompatible with the debate level we expect here.

[bezdomni]

So has fine art; is that a science?

Human creative capabilities are determined by social conditions, so yes, there is a scientific way to look at art.


Even your petty and, for more damningly, unimaginative insults cling to the 19th century. However, it is more important to note that the fact that you call me "bourgeois" shows a gross misunderstanding of class structure. It is typical of most idealistic adolescents with a desire to show off just how radical they, and their rhetoric are, yet lack the understanding to pull it off.

Paragraph edited off, as it was incompatible with the debate level we expect here.

Did you notice that your most substantial response to my post was to the least substantial thing I said?

You don&#39;t have to be a bourgeois to reflect bourgeois ideology.


What you are saying is that Marx&#39;s ideas regarding the nature and status of history are not the product of their time; I am saying you should modernise your reading list.

No, Marx himself even acknolwedged that he got many of his ideas from other thinkers.


“And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove:
(1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production,
(2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat,
(3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.”
-Marx

So, no, Marx was not some exception to the rule in his ability to make discoveries. He depended as much on historical and social conditions as anybody else.

But Marxism is different from just what Marx wrote. Marxism has influenced lots of thinkers and critics, some less than others. For example; Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Sartre, Foucault, Adorno, Gramsci, Debord....there are TONS of modern thinkers who exhibit either an entirely correct or semi-correct understanding of Marxism.

You should read "Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity" on revcom.us, it answers lots of these questions and refutes your position pretty effectively...which I would liken to that of Karl Popper (that Marxism isn&#39;t a science because it isn&#39;t falsifiable).

ComradeRed has also dispelled this Popperian myth.


You are a truly rare gem; the way you can come across as being so pompus and self righteous, while at the same time invariably incorrect, is a truly breath taking.

This doesn&#39;t refute anything.


Paragraph edited off, as it was incompatible with the debate level we expect here.

Paragraph edited off, as it was incompatible with the debate level we expect here.

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

History is not a science, archeology is.

[Invader Zim]

Human creative capabilities are determined by social conditions, so yes, there is a scientific way to look at art.

There is a scietific way of looking at anything; that doesn&#39;t necessarily make it a science. The very fact that fine art, is art, should tell you that.

The simple fact is that one can methodically investigate, and provide documentation that puts it beyond all reasonable doubt that an event occurs; but that is not what history is. History is taking these events and sources, selecting them, weighing them, balancing them and then proposing an opinion. All of which are personal subjective decisions on the part of the historian which are not governed by any form of scientific methodology; and anyone who claims they are is deluded.



Did you notice that your most substantial response to my post was to the least substantial thing I said?

Your insults are more interesting than your meagre attempts at comprehending theory.


Marx himself even acknolwedged that he got many of his ideas from other thinkers

Utterly irrelevent. Do you even understand the point being made; or has that passed you by?


Marxism has influenced lots of thinkers and critics

And? That doesn&#39;t mean anything; it does not make history a science. What you are doing is nothing more than concocting, and badly at that, an argumentum ad verecundiam.



You should read "Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity" on revcom.us

Sorry, I&#39;ve got much better things to do with my time than re-read anything by Avakain.



You&#39;re worse than Rosa.

In the words of The Dude, "Yeah, well, that&#39;s like, your opinion, man."

But then again, you have already shown a gross misunderstanding of the nature of the subjective.

[apathy maybe]

It is my humble opinion, after just reading the last page of this thread, and skimming the other pages whilst they have gone up, that Invader Zim shows a greater understanding of what history is, and the relation of history to science.

It is also my opinion that Invader Zim is doing well in the sophisticated insult competition as well, putting SovietPants down with ease.


Now, onto the question. Is history a science? (I will ignore the first post, and the long article in it.) Well, I would suggest first defining the terms...

History is the study of the human past, society, events, and so on.
Here are some other definitions,


Originally posted by http://www.thefreedictionary.com/history
A narrative of events; a story.
A chronological record of events, as of the life or development of a people or institution, often including an explanation of or commentary on those events.
The branch of knowledge that records and analyzes past event.
So, history is about the past, includes recording and analysing that past.
It could be a mere record of events, or include commentary.

I would suggest that any such commentary, or analysis would be, as Invader Zim appears to be arguing, subjective. Opinion.


Now then, what is science? This is much more difficult to answer.
I did a course at uni which was all about this question, and what I got out of that course really was, "depends". However, I can say this, I can tell you what science is not, really easily.
Science is not a mere collection of facts, figures and so on. Neither is it (meant to be) subjective.
Science is intended to be the study of things, in an objective manner, using repeatable methods (the scientific method). Of course, when you study the philosophy of science, you get into what is and isn&#39;t objective, into falsification, and so on. After all, who is to say that one falsification is enough to prove a theory is incorrect? You need to repeatedly falsify the theory before people start accepting that perhaps you are correct. Anyway, so the objective nature of science is the goal, is the theory, but it is hard to achieve in reality. Hence why repeatability by different people in different settings is so important. Science is, also meant to be rational... (though this might not have much to do with history being a science or not, it must be included).


Can you do that in social sciences? Well, I guess you can, in some. Can you do that in history? Well not really.

Does that make Marxism any less or more of a science? Well, Marxism is more then just history. It is a grand theory of human society, looking at history, economics, and other aspects of society. Can you falsify Marxism (or show that Marxism has been falsified)? Not easily. Of course, if a Marxist or Marxian person makes a prediction using Marxism, and it is shown to be correct, that does add weight to the claim that Marxism is a science.



(And now for the footnote. Is the theory of paradigms useful? No. I&#39;ll address this in my next post.)

[Marsella]

Well said apathy maybe.

Perhaps the questions should be:

Is history a science?

Is Marxism a science?

[apathy maybe]

Oh, and for an interesting look at history, see the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy entry. http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/entries/history/ (This is the Australian mirror, you would do well to find a closer one.)


Now on to paradigms. First I&#39;ll give you a bit of history on my thoughts on the matter. As I mentioned above, I did a course on the philosophy of science. It mentioned paradigms (it was a good chunk of the course in fact).

Is the theory of paradigms plausible? Yes. Is it useful? Does it really separate a science from a non-science? No.

Now onto ComradeRed...

Originally posted by ComradeRed
I skimmed through most of the replies, and I must say that I am rather disappointed with this post. Some have noted that the motivation of the original post was to "prove" that MLM is a science (or scientific) as opposed to history (which is the title of the thread).

To do this, it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of science, for example:


Dictionaries define &#39;science&#39; in terms such as "a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study" and "knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method"[1]Science is more complex than this.

For example, the first definition given is vague enough to include astrology, alchemy, mathematics, and philosophy as sciences...which they aren&#39;t.

The second definition is flawed since science doesn&#39;t "cover general truths". Science is a culture of doubt, looking to falsify theories, rather than prove them.

Given these vague definitions, one could prove almost anything is a science.

Well yes indeed.



My brief definition of science focuses on the most central element of scientific method, namely the testing of accepted facts and theories against reality. Meh, science doesn&#39;t really work this way though.

Science works through paradigms...tools used to analyze and explain problems.

The Newtonian paradigm gave way to the Lagrangian/Hamiltonian paradigm (which gave way to the relativistic Lagrangian/Hamiltonian paradigm which then gave way to the relativistic quantum field theoretic paradigm).

Marxism is a paradigm, as is Leninism inc. There are specific tool sets that Marxism uses, there are particular tool sets that Leninism uses.
For those of you who don&#39;t know, Thomas Kuhn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas+Kuhn) wrote a book about paradigms, and I would suggest reading the Wikipedia article linked. But I will quote some sections...

Kuhn also argues that rival paradigms are incommensurable—that is, it is not possible to understand one paradigm through the conceptual framework and terminology of another rival paradigm. For many critics, this thesis seemed to entail that theory choice is fundamentally irrational: if rival theories cannot be directly compared, then one cannot make a rational choice as to which one is better.
And indeed, science is meant to be rational (which I need to go and add to my previous post...).

So anyway, science may work on paradigms, but does this tell us what science is, or separate science from non-science? Well, not really.
As well, is it really rational? Well, maybe not. Why not just go with Paul Feyerabend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul+Feyerabend) and just use any method one likes? After all, they are all as good as each other...


.
.
.
As for those that say History is not a science, what about case studies? Or History and Mathematics (http://urss.ru/cgi-bin/db.pl?cp=&page=Book&id=53184&lang=en&blang=en&list=1)?
Case studies are a variation on the theme of repeatability. Rather then repeating over time, they repeat at the same time. (Assuming you mean multiple person case-studies. Though, with single member case studies the same applies, in that a single case study while useful, only really becomes useful when compared against other case studies.)
As for the link, I&#39;m not sure what you are trying to prove with it. At one point you mention that maths isn&#39;t a science, and then you are trying to say that it is? Of course maths is useful in history, it is used everywhere. But it doesn&#39;t change the fundamental subjectivity of interpreting historical events. What if Arch-Duke Franz didn&#39;t die? Would Austria-Hungry have gone into Serbia? What then? What if? Etc.

History is about the past, and we can&#39;t go over it again and again.

[bezdomni]

History is taking these events and sources, selecting them, weighing them, balancing them and then proposing an opinion. All of which are personal subjective decisions on the part of the historian which are not governed by any form of scientific methodology; and anyone who claims they are is deluded.

So what of the "opinion" that the holocaust never happened? Or that Jesus existed?

We can draw conclusions from sources in history. Marxism enables us to draw truth from the facts of history. What I should say is not that history is a science in-itself, but there is a scientific approach to history - Marxism. There have been other somewhat scientific ways of looking at history for a long time, but it wasn&#39;t until Marx that there was a really consolidated theory of historical development. In the same way that it wasn&#39;t until Einstein that we had a really consolidated idea of modern physics.

Our understanding of history has developed like our understanding of any other science. Therefore, history is a science in every meaningful way.

The rest of your post is not an argument, Sentence edited off, as it was incompatible with the debate level we expect here. I have no desire to respond to the rest of it.


It is also my opinion that Invader Zim is doing well in the sophisticated insult competition as well, putting SovietPants down with ease.


Good for him. I am more concerned with conducting honest debate than making "sophisticated insults".

[Invader Zim]

So what of the "opinion" that the holocaust never happened? Or that Jesus existed?

What of them? In order to construct the case against the occurence of the holocaust one would have to concoct a very poor argument using a highly limited selection of sources. It takes little effort to construct a much more realistic argument, which is why historians near universally reject the holocaust denial camp.

As for the existance of Jesus; reasonable arguments can be provided in either direction.


What I should say is not that history is a science in-itself,

It is not a science at all.


but there is a scientific approach to history

There are plenty of &#39;scientific&#39;, in a broad sense of the word, approaches and paradigms within history.


but it wasn&#39;t until Marx that there was a really consolidated theory of historical development.

Wrong, try Whig history.



Our understanding of history has developed like our understanding of any other science.

Utterly wrong, you should investigate subjects before commenting on them.


I am more concerned with conducting honest debate than making "sophisticated insults".

Paragraph edited off, as it was incompatible with the debate level we expect here.

[Luís Henrique]

1. I will have not the time to answer the relevant posts until monday, sorry. :(

2. This thread belongs in Theory, not in History. Please do not move threads from a forum without talking to the forum mod. <_<

3. As soon as I have the time, posts containing petty insults will be sanitized, and the infractors warned. :angry:

Luís Henrique

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by [email protected] 04, 2007 02:25 am
Science works through paradigms...tools used to analyze and explain problems.

Marxism is a paradigm, as is Leninism inc. There are specific tool sets that Marxism uses, there are particular tool sets that Leninism uses.
Marxism is far more than a paradigm, and paradigms are merely for professionals to solve definied (or very limited in scope) problems within a discipline. It&#39;s understandable you would naturally fall into such an approach, but you shouldn&#39;t reduce Marxism to that - this is to reduce it to bourgeois terms.

[grove street]

History is not a science within it"self< but scientific method can be applied to history>

The actual argument of the original post has little to do with wherether history is a science or not< but wherether Marxism is a science and its use in analysing society both past and present>

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 05, 2007 03:38 am
So anyway, science may work on paradigms, but does this tell us what science is, or separate science from non-science? Well, not really.
As well, is it really rational? Well, maybe not. Why not just go with Paul Feyerabend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul+Feyerabend) and just use any method one likes? After all, they are all as good as each other...
...because science doesn&#39;t have one holy method...

Again, take Newton&#39;s second law - a second order differential equation - compare it to Lagrangian/Hamiltonian mechanics, and compare that to quantum mechanics. The methodology you use changes rather drastically.

The tools you use vary paradigm to paradigm, that goes without saying. We could go by a case-by-case basis to inspect each paradigm to see if the tools they are using are "rational".

The argument you are making in the passage above seems kind of disconnected. Science "works on" paradigms (I wouldn&#39;t have a clue, but I know science works "through" paradigms).

A paradigm isn&#39;t necessarily logical. This is debatable however.

So therefore any methodology of science is isomorphic ("equivalent") to each other?

Your conclusion doesn&#39;t really follow.

Further I don&#39;t really think Kuhn was trying to draw the boundaries of science with paradigms, instead he was trying to demonstrate how science worked. For example, the tools of quantum mechanics (in the canonical interpretation with a Hilbert space equipped with linear, self-adjoint operators) one works by making all observables self-adjoint operators on the Hilbert space, replace the Poisson brackets with commutators, etc. etc. etc. That&#39;s the "tools" you use in canonically quantizing a classical system.

Other things can work "like" science (i.e. "through", "in", "around", "about", "containerized with" paradigms) without being a science, vulgar economics comes quickly to mind.

So the question remains "What is a science?"

I wonder to what degree rationality is a requirement, because I could concoct some pretty irrational scenarios in quantum field theory. Empiricism is a stronger requirement in my opinion. Math needs to be rational, science needs to deal with empirical phenomena.

To rigorously define science, one would need to specifically constrain the scope of empiricism and so forth.



As for those that say History is not a science, what about case studies? Or History and Mathematics (http://urss.ru/cgi-bin/db.pl?cp=&page=Book&id=53184&lang=en&blang=en&list=1)?
Case studies are a variation on the theme of repeatability. Rather then repeating over time, they repeat at the same time. (Assuming you mean multiple person case-studies. Though, with single member case studies the same applies, in that a single case study while useful, only really becomes useful when compared against other case studies.)
As for the link, I&#39;m not sure what you are trying to prove with it. At one point you mention that maths isn&#39;t a science, and then you are trying to say that it is? Of course maths is useful in history, it is used everywhere. But it doesn&#39;t change the fundamental subjectivity of interpreting historical events. What if Arch-Duke Franz didn&#39;t die? Would Austria-Hungry have gone into Serbia? What then? What if? Etc.

History is about the past, and we can&#39;t go over it again and again. Uh, I was referring to case studies as in "Studying the cases of industrialization in the Asian tigers compared to Western Europe"...not as in the "what if" scenarios.

I suppose that&#39;s comparative studies then, oh well I don&#39;t know ivory tower jargon. Whatever.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by PRC&#045;[email protected] 06, 2007 03:26 pm
Marxism is far more than a paradigm, and paradigms are merely for professionals to solve definied (or very limited in scope) problems within a discipline. It&#39;s understandable you would naturally fall into such an approach, but you shouldn&#39;t reduce Marxism to that - this is to reduce it to bourgeois terms.
A paradigm is not something merely for the "professionals".

Anyone can use a paradigm&#33;

And not every paradigm has "defined (or very limited in scope) problems". Look up the Wheeler-DeWitt equation in canonical quantum gravity...or more recent endeavors of using the SO(4,C) group in Loop Quantum Gravity.

Those problems aren&#39;t defined at all because the math doesn&#39;t exist :o

Further, what problem does Marxism have that isn&#39;t defined? If you answer that question, the problem is defined.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by ComradeRed+December 07, 2007 01:38 am--> (ComradeRed @ December 07, 2007 01:38 am)
PRC&#045;[email protected] 06, 2007 03:26 pm
Marxism is far more than a paradigm, and paradigms are merely for professionals to solve definied (or very limited in scope) problems within a discipline. It&#39;s understandable you would naturally fall into such an approach, but you shouldn&#39;t reduce Marxism to that - this is to reduce it to bourgeois terms.
A paradigm is not something merely for the "professionals".

Anyone can use a paradigm&#33;

And not every paradigm has "defined (or very limited in scope) problems". Look up the Wheeler-DeWitt equation in canonical quantum gravity...or more recent endeavors of using the SO(4,C) group in Loop Quantum Gravity.

Those problems aren&#39;t defined at all because the math doesn&#39;t exist :o

Further, what problem does Marxism have that isn&#39;t defined? If you answer that question, the problem is defined. [/b]
Of course anyone can use a paradigm, I&#39;m discussing where it arose from...

I&#39;d say those examples are exceptions to the rule.

Marxism is not a paradigm, it is a philosophy of revolutionary praxis.

Formal logic (like your statement &#39;Further, what problem does Marxism have that isn&#39;t defined? If you answer that question, the problem is defined. &#39;) is correct within its own system, but not so much in reality. Hence the need for a science that deals with totality.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by PRC&#045;[email protected] 06, 2007 08:55 pm
Of course anyone can use a paradigm, I&#39;m discussing where it arose from...
Where, how, and why a paradigm "arises" is irrelevant entirely.

The fact that it exists and has well defined "tools" in its "bag of methods" is enough to allow it to be a paradigm...in addition to a scope, etc. etc. etc.


I&#39;d say those examples are exceptions to the rule. Not really, it&#39;s quite common that a paradigm will encounter problems that it cannot answer...but the question is still well defined.

That&#39;s the whole idea of a "paradigm change".

Newtonian mechanics (and Lagrangian/Hamiltonian classical nonrelativistic mechanics) really couldn&#39;t answer the question of Galilean transforms with the speed of light...it took special relativity to do it.

The question simply didn&#39;t make sense&#33; But they were well defined&#33; What a nuisance&#33;

So it&#39;s not exceptions. They&#39;re indicators of a paradigm change.


Marxism is not a paradigm, it is a philosophy of revolutionary praxis. Oh dear, this is splitting hairs more or less.

Would you care to elaborate on the differences?


Formal logic (like your statement &#39;Further, what problem does Marxism have that isn&#39;t defined? If you answer that question, the problem is defined. &#39;) is correct within its own system, but not so much in reality. Hence the need for a science that deals with totality. This is totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

A paradigm is not decoupled from reality. It is not a set of a priori tools that some group of people pull from thin air, it&#39;s a set of tools that are based off of the short comings of the previous paradigms.

They are verified to have the same or greater degree of precision as the paradigm it is replacing in other regards (i.e. the problems that the previous paradigm could solve...e.g. the classical limit in quantum mechanics).

It&#39;s not like Lagrange simply pulled his equations from his ass, he actually put some thought into the empirical implications of Newton&#39;s second law for both free particles and particles in a field.

And if you carry out the experiments, the Lagrangian paradigm is correct to a degree of precision.

This isn&#39;t something that is done completely divorced from reality as you are insinuating.

[Invader Zim]

2. This thread belongs in Theory, not in History. Please do not move threads from a forum without talking to the forum mod.

It clearly doesn&#39;t. This has nothing to do with Marxist theory, or any kind of leftist theory, it is entirely about history and how it is practised and seen; it belongs in history.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 07, 2007 06:02 am
It clearly doesn&#39;t. This has nothing to do with Marxist theory, or any kind of leftist theory, it is entirely about history and how it is practised and seen; it belongs in history.
Did you even read the first post at all? It was about how "scientific" the "true ideology" of Marxist-Leninist-Maoism is.

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by ComradeRed+December 07, 2007 08:28 pm--> (ComradeRed @ December 07, 2007 08:28 pm)
Invader [email protected] 07, 2007 06:02 am
It clearly doesn&#39;t. This has nothing to do with Marxist theory, or any kind of leftist theory, it is entirely about history and how it is practised and seen; it belongs in history.
Did you even read the first post at all? It was about how "scientific" the "true ideology" of Marxist-Leninist-Maoism is. [/b]

Did you even read the first post at all?

The simple fact is the dicussion has moved on from that particular brand of nonsense; or haven&#39;t you been paying attention?

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 08, 2007 03:30 am
The simple fact is the dicussion has moved on from that particular brand of nonsense; or haven&#39;t you been paying attention?
You were the very first to reply to this thread and you didn&#39;t even reply to the topic of the thread. You forked it into a discussion of whether history is a science or not.

Or did you forget that too? :huh:

[Invader Zim]

you didn&#39;t even reply to the topic of the thread.

My reply, like at least 90% of the posts in this thread, are in responce to the title of the thread not the nonsense contained within the OP. The thread is about the nature of history; because that is what everyone is discussing.

[Lynx]

History is a log of events in chronological order.

[Luís Henrique]

Soviet Pants and Invader Zim&#39;s inappropriate comments have been removed. Both can consider themselves duly warned. Keep civil, please.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 07, 2007 02:02 pm


2. This thread belongs in Theory, not in History. Please do not move threads from a forum without talking to the forum mod.

It clearly doesn&#39;t. This has nothing to do with Marxist theory, or any kind of leftist theory, it is entirely about history and how it is practised and seen; it belongs in history.
It is (or, rather, it became) a thread on Theory of History.

Luís Henrique

[mikelepore]

Marxism is a science when its practitioners are listing some general hypotheses and identifying some data needed to check them. Marxism is not a science when its practioners are expressing their feelings about what sort of world they would prefer to live in.

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+December 10, 2007 08:39 pm--> (Luís Henrique @ December 10, 2007 08:39 pm)
Invader [email protected] 07, 2007 02:02 pm


2. This thread belongs in Theory, not in History. Please do not move threads from a forum without talking to the forum mod.

It clearly doesn&#39;t. This has nothing to do with Marxist theory, or any kind of leftist theory, it is entirely about history and how it is practised and seen; it belongs in history.
It is (or, rather, it became) a thread on Theory of History.

Luís Henrique [/b]
And the description of the Theory forum is "A place for indepth discussions on Marxism, Socialism, Communism, Leninism, anarchism, and other politically theoretical topics."

The Theory of &#39;History&#39;, is not a politcally theoretical topic, it is however grounded in historiography. It belongs in History.

[apathy maybe]

ComradeRed: Kuhn was not trying to separate science from non-science. And this is what makes his paradigm theory not so useful when answering the question, "is History a science"? Just because something works like a science, doesn&#39;t mean it is one. And, no matter how much history is like a science, it isn&#39;t.


I wonder to what degree rationality is a requirement, because I could concoct some pretty irrational scenarios in quantum field theory. Empiricism is a stronger requirement in my opinion. Math needs to be rational, science needs to deal with empirical phenomena.

To rigorously define science, one would need to specifically constrain the scope of empiricism and so forth.

Well, I only chuck rationality in there because otherwise we can have idiots saying that their theory is a science, that it explains everything and so on, even though it is a load of shit. Take creationism, it explains everything sure, except that it is not at all rational.


Anyway, yes empiricism is important as well. But how is that relevant to history?

I know you like paradigms, but I continue to fail to see how you can use the theory to say that history is a science.



(And the Feyerabend thing is, if science works "through" paradigms (or whatever :P), and paradigms can&#39;t distinguish between science and non-science, then why not just accept Feyerabend&#39;s argument that any method is equally good?)

[RebelDog]

We humans study animals and how these animals evolve and behave constrained by the process of Darwinian natural selection. We shouldn&#39;t forget that the same rules apply to humans and how we have evolved/are evolving and how we behave, we just have more complex behavior and actions than the other animals. We can make general predictions like that, where resources become scarce humans will have wars to secure greater resources, where drastic environmental changes take place humans will perish and survivors will return to primitive methods to secure resources. We can also understand why certain events took place. Fundamentally Hitler came to power in Germany because the ruling class feared the powerful proletarian class in the general battle in society to secure resources by individuals and their classes.

We can generally understand why humans act like they do, most simply put: to survive and reproduce, and we better understand history when we shake off the idea that humans, their behavior and actions, their history, is something that is outside the realm of science. We have a long way to go and a crude understanding but that doesn&#39;t mean human history is not a science. Like any science the study of human history and its understanding throws up good and bad science, most fundamentally because class interests see the ruling class writing history as the history of their class and ideology, like what happens in the &#39;traditional&#39; sciences today. If humans one day live in a class free society then the scientific study of human history will not have its opposed interests and that may be the great leap forward (for want of a better phrase) that its study and understanding requires before we really can formulate better ways of understanding the past beyond the Marxist method.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

History ain&#39;t no science. You can&#39;t experiment on it, you can&#39;t offer concrete proof of any analysis you care to make on it, it is permanently cursed with an imperfect and often subjective record of events, and so on.

Natural sciences, to put it crudely, can check to see if they are correct in their theories. All history can do is present itself, in its messy haze, for analysis. Very different story. Not that history is any less grand a pursuit, of course, but it just isn&#39;t as good at reaching safe conclusions as science is. Marxism is better than most analyses, because it tries to be as evidentially based as possible, but it is not akin to a physical science.

-Alex

[mikelepore]

Hypothesis: Most workplace injuries are caused by the fact the management isn&#39;t being performed by workers&#39; elected representatives

Experiment: Establish management by workers&#39; elected representative and then measure whether the rate of workplace injuries has decreased.

--

Hypothesis: Most of the air pollution is caused by the profit motive.

Experiment: Replace the profit motive by production for social use, and then measure any change in the level of air pollution.

--

Hypothesis: The division of people into economic classes is the major cause of suicide.

Experiment: Abolish the division of people into economic classes, and then measure the new suicide rate.

--

It seems scientific to me.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

It doesn&#39;t really matter if it seems scientific to you, we&#39;re concerned with the truth of the matter.

Fact is, even if you removed the profit incentive from the air pollution question, and there was an immediate and predictable decline, you have no way of establishing controls. In physical sciences, you have to isolate your variables, i.e. make sure nothing else is influencing the rate of air pollution, in order to accurately measure the profit motive&#39;s effect on it. In so complex and intangible a thing as history, you haven&#39;t got a hope in hell of doing that, so it isn&#39;t science. It&#39;s analysis.

-Alex

[Hit The North]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13, 2007 12:43 pm
It doesn&#39;t really matter if it seems scientific to you, we&#39;re concerned with the truth of the matter.

Fact is, even if you removed the profit incentive from the air pollution question, and there was an immediate and predictable decline, you have no way of establishing controls. In physical sciences, you have to isolate your variables, i.e. make sure nothing else is influencing the rate of air pollution, in order to accurately measure the profit motive&#39;s effect on it. In so complex and intangible a thing as history, you haven&#39;t got a hope in hell of doing that, so it isn&#39;t science. It&#39;s analysis.

-Alex
But the generalisability of many experiments is compromised by exerting too much control over the variables and isolating them from the possible influence of extraneous variables in the outside world.

You seem to be limiting science to statements about simple causal relationships. What about explaining and understanding complex systems? Are you suggesting that science cannot cope with that?

[BurnTheOliveTree]

You seem to be limiting science to statements about simple causal relationships. What about explaining and understanding complex systems? Are you suggesting that science cannot cope with that?

It depends what you mean by a complex system. I&#39;m all up for scientific investigation of say, consciousness. That&#39;s a whole fascinating area of neuroscience, extremely complex, and very difficult to control properly. A complex system, you might say. In that instance, science struggles harder than with straight causality, of course, but I definitely think it can be coped with.

Human history is a whole other kettle of fish - a different league of complexity altogether. Every event that ever occurs affects our history in some way, and it is flat-out beyond us to narrow down causes and effects with the certainty that physical sciences enjoy. To experiment scientifically on a historical proposal is not possible, because the records of history are horrendously imperfect and flawed. Therefore, any claim you care to make that isn&#39;t a plain fact cannot be verified, at least in the scientific sense. Historical analysis is, at most, well educated guesswork.

-Alex

[mikelepore]

The task is scientific if the steps are taken to be as scientific as possible given the limitations which are admitted. You have to classify data that you happen to receive rather than generate data intentionally. You don&#39;t have control over sample size. There are an huge number of inputs. A system may be a state machine with hypersensitivity to initial conditions. You try to be as scientific as possible. You define categories for things, with ambiguity removed from the vocabulary. You look out for things that me be quantifiable and then perform standard statistics on them. You keep track of what steps you are taking to ensure that the desire for a particular conclusion doesn&#39;t produce the conclusion. The limitations are generated by the system you are studying and not by your methods. That is to be as scientific as possible. This is nothing new. Many fields which along time later became more scientific had to first go through centuries in which the best that people could do was to name and classify objects. Perhaps someday in the future there will be a neurological model of the mind and then a computer may calculate future history. For now, we should be as scientific as possible, and for that there is nothing to apologize for.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 03, 2007 04:34 pm
Of course they are; they are all written in a manner, include certain information and excude other information for various purposes; Hitler&#39;s orders to his general on the Eastern front is no exception.
Sources don&#39;t speak for themselves. You must ask them. If you make the wrong questions, you get the wrong answers.

If you ask Hitler&#39;s orders whether there was a world-wide Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy against the Aryan race, they give you a subjective answer. Hitler thought so, which is immaterial to existence or non-existence of such conspiracy. If you ask Hitler&#39;s orders whether the Wehrmacht was working under direct orders to break war laws and kill Soviet komissars in a way that can only be described as war crimes, then the answer is pretty neat: yes, the Wehrmacht had orders to kill Soviet komissars in breach of war laws.


Ultimately, without visiting at the time it occured, it is impossible to say diffinatively. However; while one may be able to see that the General is either lying or is mistaken, the issue of the photos is also wide open to debate regarding the degree of the torture, how wide spread it was, etc. At this point the credibility of the sources become far less obvious.

How can one be able to see that the General is lying?


Indeed, but at what point are female, male, working class, ruling class, stuctural, etc, factors stated to the degree that they are over-estimations or are still understated? That is entirely a matter of opinion.

If so, it doesn&#39;t make sence to talk about over or underestimations. Something can only be underestimated if there is some kind of objective measure of what is a correct estimation.


Of course they exist, I have read translaions of some of them. However, the issue is not whether they exist but whether they existed in enough numbers and were distributed widely enough to give the German populous even a vague idea of how wide spread the holocaust was and on what a large scale the holocaust was.

Sybil Milton estimates there are about 2,000,000 surviving photographs of atrocities in the East Front.



(and you are wrong; the source of "infection" here isn&#39;t Goldhagen, but Omer Bartov.)

I&#39;ve never read him, but I am reliably informed that he writes a load of intentionalist drivel.

You surely can share with us the source of your reliable information?


Goldhagen is a poor historian; Irving is a racist charlatan and no historian at all. What Irving did was to make up facts and attribute them to the sources; it wasn&#39;t a case of subjective interpretation of sources but downright lying about them.

How do you know, if everything is a matter of opinion?

When you say that Irving is no historian at all, are you telling us your opinion, or are you comunicating a fact? Because the way you say it, it doesn&#39;t sound like you think it is a mere opinion.

You see, either you went too much, or you didn&#39;t go far enough. When you say sources are entirely subjective, you mean something that would invalidate any science. After all, you and me have never measured the speed of the fall of two different objects with different weights in vacuum, to see if it is really the same. Some scientist perhaps made it, and if the results are those we are acquainted from high school, then it perhaps means that matter attracts matter in the direct ratio of the masses, etc. Or it perhaps means angels provide that it happens like that, to delude us that the material world is a rational place.

At some place, there is a leap of faith. We assume that there is a material world outside us, and that our sences and reason are fair instruments to assess it. We could just be wrong, even if we are physicists instead of historians.



And how can you, from your point of view, deplore Goldhagen?

Because he makes a bad argument. Of course he could be correct, his interpritation of the heavily selected sources he chose maybe the the correct one; but I doubt it.

See, you have a standard of objectivity here. Goldhagen selected sources. You question his selection, because you are aware of different sets of sources that would contradict him. Is the existence of such alternate sources an opinion? Also you question his interpretation of the sources he choose. Unless this is simply repeating the former question, you are probably questioning his reasoning about the sources. Is his reasoning logically flawed? Does it pressupose aspects that cannot be found in his sources? Again, such questioning doesn&#39;t seem subjective at all.



I can&#39;t be mirroring his views here.

Simply because you haven&#39;t read the book, probably the most famous of that particular ilk, doesn&#39;t necessarily mean that you haven&#39;t inadvertantly produced a simililar mirroring argument.

I think you are wrong.

My argument comes from Bartov; unless you can show me that Goldhagen is influential on Bartov, Goldhagen must be innocent of influencing me. And, as far as I know, it would seem that the opposite is true: that Bartov and other historians influenced Goldhagen, who in turn spinned their conclusions into something more sensational and saleable.



But the idea that they didn&#39;t know that something awful was happening to their Jewish neighbours is too naive.

Now that is a different question. It seems that they did know that Jews were being maltreated, after Kristallnacht that much must have been obvious. But there is a significant difference between the majority of the populous knowing that the Jews were being treated poorly and knowing that six million of Europes jews were being systematically murdered in numerous death camps located across Poland.

Oh well. Evidently they didn&#39;t know exactly that; at the very least they would have missed the "six million" figure.

However, that is not the question. The question is, did the German populace, at large, know that there was a systematical effort to wipe out the Jewry of the occupied territories, whether that was made in camps with cyanide or carbon monoxide, or by Genickschuessen in the Wehrmacht&#39;s rearguard?

It seems clear, now, that they had the elements to come to that conclusion: photographs of the atrocities, oral and written reports by SS and Wehrmacht soldiers coming back from the front, the promises of the Nazi hierarchy, the denounces of individual priests and of the White Rose movement, the distribution of clothes and other personal property that was confiscated from Jews by the Winterhilfe, etc. Whether they made such conclusion, or whether they preferred to repress such knowledge, because of fear, petty interest, loyalty to "their" government, patriotism or whatever else, this, yes, we will probably never know.


T4 differs from the bulk of the holocaust in that it actually happened to Germans, the majority of murdered Jews were not German and the German jews were the very last to murdered and, in the case of T4, it was being committed by German civillians, doctors and nurses.

The degree of integration (assimilation) of the Jewish population in Germany was very high. Intermarriages were widespread (and mixed couples were faced with terrible choices). When the Nazi authority tried to expel Jewish men married to "Aryan" wives to the East, there was popular resistance, and the move was cancelled. Of course it can be argued that the German populace knew that the German Jews were being moved East, their property confiscated, but not necessarily that they were being killed in a systematical way. It seems however, that the only way they would not connect the dots was by not being really interested on what was happening.

The T4 operation is relevant because it shows that the German populace was aware that the Nazi regime was in fact not above exterminating particular groups of people.

Luís Henrique

[Zhou]

I believe that history is a science in the sense that it is scientifically analyzed


Originally posted by BurnTheOliveTree+--> (BurnTheOliveTree)It doesn&#39;t really matter if it seems scientific to you, we&#39;re concerned with the truth of the matter.[/b]

The truth of the matter is that mikelepore offered analysis and hypothesis, and ways to make such a hypothesis testable. Thus, analyzations of past events (and we know about these past events through either history, written records, or archaeology, which is none more than applied history and a recognized science.) Moreover, historians evaluate historical evidence provided by archaologists, and various other analyetical works. It&#39;s not that it seems scientific, it&#39;s that mikelepore and all the other members stating history is, indeed, a science, are proving by showing simple hypotheses and situations concerning historical science.


Originally posted by BurnTheOliveTree+--> (BurnTheOliveTree)Fact is, even if you removed the profit incentive from the air pollution question, and there was an immediate and predictable decline, you have no way of establishing controls. In physical sciences, you have to isolate your variables, i.e. make sure nothing else is influencing the rate of air pollution, in order to accurately measure the profit motive&#39;s effect on it. In so complex and intangible a thing as history, you haven&#39;t got a hope in hell of doing that, so it isn&#39;t science. It&#39;s analysis. [/b]

Simply because there is no control in an experiment does not make the hypothesis itself untestable. Of course, that is the proper scientific method, but if you can test it, you can test it, and if you absolutely have to make an exception to learn about that force in history, then ya gotta make an exception. If you can&#39;t make the experiment controlled but can variably test it, why not test it? History may not be a science by definition, but I believe it is in the fact it is evaluated and analyzed in scientific methods.


[email protected]
You seem to be limiting science to statements about simple causal relationships. What about explaining and understanding complex systems? Are you suggesting that science cannot cope with that?

Agreed. I believe what makes anything a science is when it is a way to learn about occurences throughout all of time; I think that science is the name for any study of the world and new ways of thinking about it.


BurnTheOliveTree
It depends what you mean by a complex system. I&#39;m all up for scientific investigation of say, consciousness. That&#39;s a whole fascinating area of neuroscience, extremely complex, and very difficult to control properly. A complex system, you might say. In that instance, science struggles harder than with straight causality, of course, but I definitely think it can be coped with.

Is History not a complex system we have yet to fully understand? Can&#39;t we strive to find out more about that complex system and explain it, and know about it? That sounds like science. But don&#39;t take my word for it, the Random House Unabridged Dictionary tells us this on the subject of science:

"Science-. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws."

Is History not some sort of systematic body of truths?

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 07, 2007 02:02 pm
It clearly doesn&#39;t. This has nothing to do with Marxist theory, or any kind of leftist theory, it is entirely about history and how it is practised and seen; it belongs in history.
See, a thread on the holodomor, or on the American Civil War, or on the Cuban Revolution, or on the 1973 coup in Chile belongs in History.

A thread on the epysthemological status of History is meta-historical; it belongs here. Or in Science, of course - but you don&#39;t want me to move it to Science, do you?

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

Sources don&#39;t speak for themselves. You must ask them. If you make the wrong questions, you get the wrong answers.

So then you accept that the information you receive from sources is relative? Relative to who is asking them and relative to what is asked of them.


If so, it doesn&#39;t make sence to talk about over or underestimations. Something can only be underestimated if there is some kind of objective measure of what is a correct estimation.

Something of a non-sequitur don’t you think? Something can be under-estimated by a historian in the estimations of another historian. A historian’s opinion on the importance of gender history is not an objective standard, but a personal one.



Sybil Milton estimates there are about 2,000,000 surviving photographs of atrocities in the East Front.

Perhaps there are, but the numbers in Germany is the important point and how many of them were widely distributed among the German population, and the fact that numerous other historians examining all kinds of evidence have concluded that ordinary Germans were unaware of the holocaust and the majority of Nazi crimes. Works such as E. Johnson&#39;s and K. H. Reuband&#39;s, We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany: An oral History, paint a very convincing picture of a largely ignorant German population. But the fact that we can have this argument, based on multiple sources and interpretations of sources, the placing of priority of one source over another is all evidence that the work of historians is largely down to personal interpretation and based on no objective standard. And the actions on the Eastern front of the Wehrmacht and the SS do not for a moment necessarily imply that ordinary Germans knew about the death camps or the scale of the mass murder in the death camps.




You surely can share with us the source of your reliable information?

Actually, annoyingly I have yet to find the review article on Hitler&#39;s Army; but I will.




How do you know, if everything is a matter of opinion?

The opinion comes into it when one interprets the sources; however interpretation is one thing; mistranslating, ignoring salient parts of the text and even making up quotes is another. That is falsifying the sources.



When you say that Irving is no historian at all, are you telling us your opinion, or are you comunicating a fact?

This is beyond historical consensus but a legal fact, as proved in a court of law.


When you say sources are entirely subjective, you mean something that would invalidate any science. After all, you and me have never measured the speed of the fall of two different objects with different weights in vacuum, to see if it is really the same. Some scientist perhaps made it, and if the results are those we are acquainted from high school, then it perhaps means that matter attracts matter in the direct ratio of the masses, etc. Or it perhaps means angels provide that it happens like that, to delude us that the material world is a rational place.

A poor analogy, because unlike in history; these tests can be made. In the case of history, what we know, is based on personal interpretation of what is written, said or seen beyond that there is no test - such as the one you just described - and that is the whole point. The issue of Irving is his sources did not provide him with scope for reasonable interpretation of the sources; so he doctored them, misquoted them and lied about them in order to suggest they said something that, even beyond the realm of interpretation, they did not. And that is the difference, a historian interprets what the sources state; the Irvings of the world simply make up what the sources state.


You question his selection, because you are aware of different sets of sources that would contradict him.

But then again, a different set of sources contradicts the sources of those who contradict Goldhagen and others could take Goldhagen&#39;s same sources and a reach a very different conclusion. This is something you, yourself, assuming the historians you have cited are correct, have proved. There are 2,000,000 photographs from the Eastern front of Wehrmacht atrocities which you think shows that the German population were aware of the scale of the crimes of the Nazi&#39;s; many of the testaments from Johnson&#39;s and Reuband&#39;s book suggest otherwise. It becomes a case of personal choice; do you choose to accept that the 2,000,000 photographs, in addition to other sources, were widely available to the German population or do you choose to accept the vast number of testimonies which suggest otherwise in addition to the other evidence?




I think you are wrong.

What you think that two people cannot independently come up with the same idea or same kind of idea?

Not to mention, I haven&#39;t read Bartov&#39;s book, I have only what you have said about it; and you have not read Goldhagen.


The question is, did the German populace, at large, know that there was a systematical effort to wipe out the Jewry of the occupied territories, whether that was made in camps with cyanide or carbon monoxide, or by Genickschuessen in the Wehrmacht&#39;s rearguard?

Most historians I have read say not. Goldhagen, in his 1996 work, says otherwise. Or rather his view is that Germany was so anti-Semitic that Germans accepted Hitler&#39;s plan to wipe out the Jews, even relished it; thus they were Hitler&#39;s willing executioners.



Whether they made such conclusion, or whether they preferred to repress such knowledge, because of fear, petty interest, loyalty to "their" government, patriotism or whatever else, this, yes, we will probably never know.

This makes the conclusion that the bulk of Germans had such knowledge in the first place.



It seems however, that the only way they would not connect the dots was by not being really interested on what was happening.

Not really, as the Nazi&#39;s had been encouraging Jews to leave Germany for years before they began to destroy the population. They had put up posters encouraging them to leave, they had publicly &#39;dumped&#39; Jews on the border of Germany and they had been talking about evicting Jews from the state for a long time. Hell before the &#39;final&#39; &#39;final solution&#39; there had been the Madagascar plan and several other relocation plans. According to Christopher Browning it was not until very late 1941 that the idea of genocide found favour among the leading Nazi&#39;s. It seems plausible in my mind that the bulk of the German population, seeing their Jewish neighbours taken away would simply assume that it was &#39;relocation&#39;; as the Nazi&#39;s told them it was.

[peaccenicked]

The question "is history a science?" wrongly posed. Science is history. Everthing is history. even history or the history of histories itself. The more interesting question is how are specific value judgement formed, but for this you need an example.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 18, 2007 07:49 pm
So then you accept that the information you receive from sources is relative? Relative to who is asking them and relative to what is asked of them.
Of course it is relative. How could it be not?


Something of a non-sequitur don’t you think? Something can be under-estimated by a historian in the estimations of another historian. A historian’s opinion on the importance of gender history is not an objective standard, but a personal one.

In which case it is not an underestimation.


Perhaps there are, but the numbers in Germany is the important point and how many of them were widely distributed among the German population, and the fact that numerous other historians examining all kinds of evidence have concluded that ordinary Germans were unaware of the holocaust and the majority of Nazi crimes.

Yes, that is the question. I don&#39;t think it has been answered conclusively as of now.

Nor do I think the German populace knew about the Holocaust. My position is different: I believe they had the elements to know, but choose not to. Something like the cheated husband who refuses to make sence from the evidence available.


But the fact that we can have this argument, based on multiple sources and interpretations of sources, the placing of priority of one source over another is all evidence that the work of historians is largely down to personal interpretation and based on no objective standard.

Evidently, where the sources are contradictory, as is the case here, different interpretations will arise. But the work of our discipline is not to indulgently assume all interpretations are equivalent, but, by critique and review (besides, of course, research of new sources), try to ascertain which interpretation better fits the known data.


And the actions on the Eastern front of the Wehrmacht and the SS do not for a moment necessarily imply that ordinary Germans knew about the death camps or the scale of the mass murder in the death camps.

You are again confusing (deliberately?) things.

Holocaust &#33;= death camps.

The question is not whether the German population knew about what exactly was happening at Auschwitz or Treblinka, but whether they knew a deliberate policy of suppression of the "Jewish race" was going on, regardless of place and method.



You surely can share with us the source of your reliable information?

Actually, annoyingly I have yet to find the review article on Hitler&#39;s Army; but I will.

We shall wait, then...



How do you know, if everything is a matter of opinion?

The opinion comes into it when one interprets the sources; however interpretation is one thing; mistranslating, ignoring salient parts of the text and even making up quotes is another. That is falsifying the sources.

Er...

The falsification of sources by Irving is a historical fact, isn&#39;t it? Or are the actions of historians different from the actions of ordinary human beings?

You seem to "objectively know" (whatever this means) that Irving falsified his sources. Why cannot I "objectively know" that the battle of Waterloo happened in 1815?



When you say that Irving is no historian at all, are you telling us your opinion, or are you comunicating a fact?

This is beyond historical consensus but a legal fact, as proved in a court of law.

See what you are telling us: that historians cannot prove historical facts... but judges can. How?


A poor analogy, because unlike in history; these tests can be made.

Some tests can be made. You cannot test whether the Big Bang happened or not, you cannot test whether a particular star will become a supernova or not, you cannot test whether the Equus caballus evolved from the Equus Przewalskii. But astrophysics and evolutionary biology are science.


In the case of history, what we know, is based on personal interpretation of what is written, said or seen beyond that there is no test - such as the one you just described - and that is the whole point.

Yes - what you ignore is that all sciences operate under such limitations. It is your comprehension of science, rather than your comprehension of History, that is flawed.

You seem to believe that Science deals with absolute truth; that&#39;s false. You seem to believe that Science deals with no interpretation; that&#39;s false. You seem to believe that all Science implies repeatability - that&#39;s false. That all Science involves experimental procedures - that&#39;s false. You seem to believe that Science is necessarily able to make accurate predictions - that&#39;s false (and besides you mix up different kinds of predictions, and make it a mistfied notion out of it).


But then again, a different set of sources contradicts the sources of those who contradict Goldhagen and others could take Goldhagen&#39;s same sources and a reach a very different conclusion. This is something you, yourself, assuming the historians you have cited are correct, have proved. There are 2,000,000 photographs from the Eastern front of Wehrmacht atrocities which you think shows that the German population were aware of the scale of the crimes of the Nazi&#39;s;

I think they show a different thing: that people acting in a normal way would have been aware of the nature of those crimes and of their intended scale.


many of the testaments from Johnson&#39;s and Reuband&#39;s book suggest otherwise.

Since you are countering a different position, may I ask you: do these documents suggest that the German populace did not know of the nature and intended scale of the crimes, or do they suggest that the German population could not know, based on the available evidence, of such nature and intended scale? Or, even, do they suggest that they simply did not know the methods, places, and schedule of the implementation of such plans?


It becomes a case of personal choice; do you choose to accept that the 2,000,000 photographs, in addition to other sources, were widely available to the German population or do you choose to accept the vast number of testimonies which suggest otherwise in addition to the other evidence?

This is something I cannot take a definite position without further reading and understanding. But this, yes, is personal: I haven&#39;t read and thought about all available evidence in this case. However, the evidence is out there, even if incomplete. Appropriately taking it into consideration can only point to three possible solutions: Yes, No, and The Available Data Are Not Enough. There certainly are no parallel universes, one in which the Germans should have known, and other in which the Germans could not have possibly known.



Whether they made such conclusion, or whether they preferred to repress such knowledge, because of fear, petty interest, loyalty to "their" government, patriotism or whatever else, this, yes, we will probably never know.

This makes the conclusion that the bulk of Germans had such knowledge in the first place.

Not so. If you don&#39;t want to know something, it is possible to avoid that knowledge.

(A similar question seems to be haunting the Argentinians in a more recent past: they apparently did not know the extent of their last Junta&#39;s crimes. But what they are asking themselves is, "how could we not notice it, when all evidence pointed to it? Why did we choose to be ignorant?"

Which seem to be more honest questions.)

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

Of course it is relative.

Then history it self is, to a degree, relative and the product of individual speculation and interpretation; thus grounding it, as much upon empirical evidence as conjecture. As such historical research produces work that is just as much a personal product as a painting.




In which case it is not an underestimation.

It is, in others eyes. And as there is no way of going back and checking, that is the only standard there is.


try to ascertain which interpretation better fits the known data.

Which again comes down to personal choice.



You are again confusing (deliberately?) things.

Things are not as black and white as you seem to think. The holocaust (a misnomer if there ever was one), is a term which can refer to the suppression of the Jews, as you claim; but many historians only use the term holocaust in reference to Die Endlösung der Judenfrage (the final solution to the Jewish question), which would specifically refer to the policy of genocide, not just suppression which is a very broad brush term.



You seem to "objectively know" (whatever this means) that Irving falsified his sources. Why cannot I "objectively know" that the battle of Waterloo happened in 1815?

Empiricism. I can read Irving&#39;s books, look at his references, go to the archives and find the documents he claims support his thesis and see that he lied. I cannot go back in time and observe the battle of Waterloo, I must rely - second hand - upon the writings of various individuals (of various honesty, biases, beliefs and delusions).



See what you are telling us: that historians cannot prove historical facts

Well, it is slightly more complicated than that; but historians do not deal in personal experiances and observations, they rely upon the experiances and observations of others.


You cannot test whether the Big Bang happened or not

But you can observe the universe and calculate the speed that the universe exands in order to support your hypothesis. Perhaps you cannot test for the big bang its self, (or can you?) however you can perform tests and calculations which support or debunk a theory. You can&#39;t do anything even remotely similar in an archive; you can look at documents and see if they are supported by other documents. And basing your arguments on such material leaves doubt. In the case of Waterloo and the Holocaust that doubt is miniscule, because the number of documents make it near impossible not to accept that they occured. However, to stick to such easy questions would reduce historians to mere chronologers.




You seem to believe that Science deals with absolute truth; that&#39;s false.

You misunderstand me, Science deals with empirically gained knowledge. Knowledge based on the observed. As historians we cannot observe the past or test anything about it. What we do is rummage through the proverbial litter bin of cultures and speculate on how things were.


do these documents suggest that the German populace did not know of the nature and intended scale of the crimes, or do they suggest that the German population could not know, based on the available evidence, of such nature and intended scale? Or, even, do they suggest that they simply did not know the methods, places, and schedule of the implementation of such plans?

It is hard to say. Some suggest that they knew something was going on, that their Jewish neighbors were no longer living near them. They heard ghastly stories, that were largely put down as mere rumour. Some may have seen images of mass graves or acts of brutality that could be one off examples of brutality. These people, may have suspected something was up, but it would seem that they were unsure or unaware of what that something was. Of course they could have been lying to place themselves into a better light. And these examples, while apparently typical, were not universal; there were some who knew full well and admitted to knowing full well what was going on.


Appropriately taking it into consideration can only point to three possible solutions: Yes, No, and The Available Data Are Not Enough. There certainly are no parallel universes, one in which the Germans should have known, and other in which the Germans could not have possibly known.

Thats kind of true, if somewhat incomplete. However, finding a definative answer is impossible and can never be achived. We cannot go back in time to the mid 40&#39;s and hook every German citizen upto a polygraph machines and quiz them on the actions of their leaders. As such the question will always be open to speculation.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader [email protected] 24, 2007 01:39 am


Of course it is relative. Then history it self is, to a degree, relative and the product of individual speculation and interpretation; thus grounding it, as much upon empirical evidence as conjecture. As such historical research produces work that is just as much a personal product as a painting. All science is, to a degree, relative and the product of individual speculation and interpretation.

But when I read Thucydides or Perry Anderson, I look forward to understand better the subject of their work, not to derive aesthetic pleasure from the reading. Which is the same I seek when I read Hawkins. When I read Shakespeare, I don't care at all if what he says does have anything to do with reality (in fact, I presupose it hasn't); it is the pleasure of a well told story, of the well used language that I am after.



In which case it is not an underestimation.It is, in others eyes. And as there is no way of going back and checking, that is the only standard there is.Only if the person who is taking his eyes as a standard to compare other's works isn't aware that his views are entirely subjective.



You seem to "objectively know" (whatever this means) that Irving falsified his sources. Why cannot I "objectively know" that the battle of Waterloo happened in 1815?Empiricism. I can read Irving's books, look at his references, go to the archives and find the documents he claims support his thesis and see that he lied. I cannot go back in time and observe the battle of Waterloo, I must rely - second hand - upon the writings of various individuals (of various honesty, biases, beliefs and delusions).Evidently, but up to now I am not acquainted to any source that states a different date for Waterloo. Perhaps this is because the battle effectively happened in 1815?



See what you are telling us: that historians cannot prove historical factsWell, it is slightly more complicated than that; but historians do not deal in personal experiances and observations, they rely upon the experiances and observations of others.And? We are not solipsists, are we?


But you can observe the universe and calculate the speed that the universe exands in order to support your hypothesis. Perhaps you cannot test for the big bang its self, (or can you?) however you can perform tests and calculations which support or debunk a theory.That are subjectively perceived as supporting a theory.


You can't do anything even remotely similar in an archive; you can look at documents and see if they are supported by other documents. And basing your arguments on such material leaves doubt. In the case of Waterloo and the Holocaust that doubt is miniscule, because the number of documents make it near impossible not to accept that they occured. However, to stick to such easy questions would reduce historians to mere chronologers.Well, evidently our science is difficult, there is no denying. But since when science ought to be easy?



You seem to believe that Science deals with absolute truth; that's false.You misunderstand me, Science deals with empirically gained knowledge. Knowledge based on the observed. As historians we cannot observe the past or test anything about it. What we do is rummage through the proverbial litter bin of cultures and speculate on how things were.Knowledge based on interpretation of the observed. Empirical observation never tells us anything. It is the interpretation of empirical data that makes science; history is no different.

Again, your view of science is a XIX century view.


Thats kind of true, if somewhat incomplete. However, finding a definative answer is impossible and can never be achived.Possibly not, just like a definitive answer on whether the Big Bang happened or not is impossible. But the available data will have to be more consistent with some explanation or other, or insufficient to make a reasonable explanation.

This is the case in any science, by the way. Mathematicians don't know a proof for the Goldbach conjuncture, and there are four possibilities:

1. The conjuncture will be proved false;
2. The conjuncture will be proved true;
3. The conjuncture will be proved undecidable;
4. It will be impossible to prove anything about the conjuncture.

(By the way, the above are arranged in an ascending order of probability)

Lu&#237;s Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

We will evidently go round and round about the scientific status of History, without either of us being able to convince the other about it.

A different issue is whether there is a consensus among the community of historians that History is not a science, which was your original claim.

This is a bit more decidable. I would say it again, to make the point very clear: Whether History is a science or not, there is no consensus about the issue among professional historians. Your only argument towards your claim is based on E. H. Carr; you misunderstood him, as he never claimed History was not a science (in fact, you completely misunderstood the meaning of all his controversy against Elton).

What is the position, on this issue, of well-known professional historians?

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

All science is, to a degree, relative and the product of individual speculation and interpretation.

You are quite right, to a degree. History is completely based on individual speculation and interpretation. As there is no empirical data for the historian to substanciate his or her claims.



But when I read Thucydides or Perry Anderson, I look forward to understand better the subject of their work, not to derive aesthetic pleasure from the reading.

It is fundermentally false to suggest that reading history should be a pleasure-free affair. Many historians work very hard to make their work as interesting as it is informative. And on the opposite side of the coin many novelists who write on historical subjects dop a great deal of research and make their novels exceptionally informative. Then what of psuedo-histories which are now used as historical sources? Or histories that are used in literature classes as examples of literary classics?



Only if the person who is taking his eyes as a standard to compare other&#39;s works isn&#39;t aware that his views are entirely subjective.

Nobody thinks their understanding of a history are subjective. People cling to the relatively arrogant ideal that their views hold some form of intrinsic higher value because they are their views. This is of course obvious, because a person must be able to legitimise their own views, at least in their own mind.



Evidently, but up to now I am not acquainted to any source that states a different date for Waterloo.

Irrelevent.



And?

And historians base their views on others observations, thus they make no empirical observations on the past of their own. They are entirely reliant upon &#39;hear-say&#39;. That is not to say that we cannot derive a lot of information with relative certainty of its veracity, but history is not based on empiricism, which was Carr&#39;s whole point.


Well, evidently our science is difficult, there is no denying.

That would be because it is not a science.


Knowledge based on interpretation of the observed.

And history is not based phenomina historians have observed, with the possible exception of ultra-contemporary history. Scientific conclusions are based upon repeatable tests and observable data.




Again, your view of science is a XIX century view.

But what does that say of your view of History which doesn&#39;t seemed to have moved on beyond von Ranke.


Whether History is a science or not, there is no consensus about the issue among professional historians.

And I would say there is. You can pick up just about any historiography primer and see that, if the historian has approached the issue, will side with the position that history is a different animal than a science.


E. H. Carr; you misunderstood him, as he never claimed History was not a science

This is completely wrong. In his book he suggests five purported differences between a history and a science. He then proceeds to suggest that at least one of them is a very solid argument. The other four he picks holes in, but in doing so he attacks the supposed empirical basis of history, and to a lesser degree to science. His conclusion is not that history is the same thing as a science, but that science is not necessarily based as solidly upon indisputable fact as is purported and that perhaps that he fields could be brought closer together. He does not at any point suggest that they are one and the same, that history is a science. Indeed the fact that he states that they could be brought closer together implies that they are seperate. I suggest you re-read him.

And Elton&#39;s work, which was largely in responce to carr, was very much a defence of the 19th century &#39;Scientific History&#39; ideal, that history was, like the sciences based upon empirical data.

On the topic (http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Whatishistory/evans4.html)

A collection of important writings on the subject (http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/history_ext_readings.pdf)

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Invader Zim+December 30, 2007 07:42 pm--> (Invader Zim @ December 30, 2007 07:42 pm) A collection of important writings on the subject (http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/history_ext_readings.pdf) [/b]
Randomly picking one of those important writings:


Eric Hobsbawm
It has become fashionable in recent decades, not least among people who think of themselves as on the left, to deny that objective reality is accessible, since what we call ‘facts’ exist only as a function of prior concepts and problems formulated in terms of these. The past we study is only a construct of our minds. One such construct is in principle as valid as another, whether it can be backed by logic and evidence or not. So long as it forms part of an emotionally strong system of beliefs, there is, as it were, no way in principle of deciding that the biblical account of the creation of the earth is inferior to the one proposed by the natural sciences: they are just different. Any tendency to doubt this is ‘positivism’, and no term indicates a more comprehensive dismissal than this, unless it is empiricism.

Seems to be criticising exactly the point of view that constitutes your dogma...

Luís Henrique

[Nusocialist]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24, 2007 01:32 pm

History is a humanity – a study of the human condition. One might well ask the question of why we actually choose to study something which has a limited practical application and is of questionable relevance to our immediate material existence. History can of course support disciplines which infer a form of praxis (such as revolutionary politics) for reasons I have stated above – the predictions that can be derived from historical experience being the most important – but, as a subject by itself, history serves no clear purpose other than to provide entertainment for those that find it interesting.

Any answers? Why is History important?
I think Bolingbroke said it best.

"History is philosophy teaching by examples."

Henry St. John Bolingbroke

[Luís Henrique]

And here, other of your authors explains correctly what E. H. Carr&#39;s position was:


Originally posted by Richard Evans
By the 1980s, therefore, the long search for a scientific method of history had failed to yield any definitive results. The period in which the social sciences, encouraged by historians like E.H.Carr, had been exerting their influence over the practice of historical research and in the most extreme cases such as that of Fogel threatening to displace &#39;traditional&#39; methods of history altogether, seemed to be coming to an end. The argument that history is, or should be, a science, in principle no different from quantum mechanics or crystallography, began to come under renewed and sustained attack, more radical than ever before.

But perhaps Evans himself sustains a position similar to yours?


For my own part, I remain optimistic that objective historical knowledge is both desirable and attainable. So when Patrick Joyce tells us that social history is dead, and Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth declares that time is a fictional construct, and Roland Barthes announces that all the world’s a text, and Hans Kellner wants historians to stop behaving as if we were researching into things that actually happened, and Diane Purkiss says that we should just tell stories without bothering whether or not they are true, and Frank Ankersmit swears that we can never know anything at all about the past so we might as well confine ourselves to studying other historians, and Keith Jenkins proclaims that all history is just naked ideology designed to get historians power and money in big university institutions run by the bourgeoisie, I will look humbly at the past and say despite them all: it really happened, and we really can, if we are very scrupulous and careful and self-critical, find out how it happened and reach some tenable though always less than final conclusions about what it all meant.

Seems not...

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

Well Cherry Picked, I can do that too. However, Evans pretty much addresses this himself, in a responce to the criticism that he defended (as you seem to be claiming) an outdated empiricist approach to history: -

"Moreover, since Ghosh also argues that it is illegitimate to describe anyone as postmodernist unless they describe themselves as such, he will presumably have to accept my insistence that I am not a Rankean even though he calls me one. Insofar as In Defence of History endorses 'Rankeanism', it is only in the sense of insisting that the methods of source-criticism introduced, not in the last few decades, but in the mid-nineteenth century by Leopold von Ranke himself, are still valid for historians today when they are analysing documents in the archive. This does not imply endorsement of Ranke's whole theory of history, however, still less of the way his name has been invoked by methodologically conservative historians wishing to reinstate political and constitutional history at the centre of the discipline, as the book makes abundantly clear in its critical discussion of both these topics."

Also you seem to have misunderstood what Evans was saying about Carr and his position; which I find odd because it is stated in very simple terms. Evans is not saying that Carr thought history was a science, or a social-science, but that Carr encouraged the development of the social sciences. Carr himself was a social scientist as well as a historian, holding the chair of International Politics at Aberystwyth university at one point. Carr's entire argument was that history was not a science because it does not deal in empiricism, but that the gap between the two can reduced.

As for Hobsbawm, he is clearly making refernce to the ultra-reletivism of individuals such as Keith Jenkins. If you associate that with my position it is abundendly clear you neither understand my postion, the position of individuals such as Jenkins and the point that Hobsbawm was making. Incidentally, you could also have picked much better examples, I posted that link because it contained important writings from both sides of the debate; and those in the middle.



If you absolutely do require clarification of my position, then below is a very short draft of a discussion I wrote back in 2004. My position is broadly the same now as it was then, though obviously if I were to re-write it it would be considerably longer and have a much larger bibliography; it would also differ in that I was writing for a specific audience.

PS. Why has this thread now been moved to science? I thought we had already been over this and you had concluded it was best in Theory. Now it is in science, I suggest it be moved to history.

[Invader Zim]

Post-modernist views in regards to history, ethics and philosophy revolve around the ideal that there is no absolute truth. Post-modernists see history as a subject which no longer holds much in the way of value. This, post-modernists argue, is because ‘facts’ lack any true objective basis, thus pointing out the relativity of knowledge. In terms of history this is idea is supported by the position we, in the present, cannot go back and confirm what happened in the past. We, in the present, must rely upon the recollections, accounts and opinions of others regarding historical events. Post modernists argue that any such accounts are bias and any attempts at interpreting such events are also biased. Viewing history from this kind of perspective offers a historian some advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages to history, that post-modernism has created is that it highlights the flaws in some methods of analysing the past, the flaws of naïve empiricism for example. The disadvantages of post-modern models for history however include a great range of issues, from challenging the very foundations of the discipline and even arguably to a drop in those who wish to study history.



A significant portion of the criticism levelled at historians and the discipline of history is that historians can not be truly objective, despite any amount of effort. Post modernists argue that a historian’s cultural back ground, race, gender, political view, nationality, class and a host of other variables mould their interpretation of the past.[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn1) Of course individual examples of bias and even incorrect information are easily detected by fellow historians, however culturally wide biases are far harder to detect.[2] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn2) Posts modernists also argue that different historians take different interpretations from texts and evidence. These factors, post-modernists, argue means that one of the historians must be incorrect. As it is often impossible to establish which one is incorrect, the very attempt to establish the truth is impossible.[3] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn3)

Post-modernism places some historical methodology into a light which reveals inherent flaws. For example Jacques Derrida took issue with some historians supposed complacency and naïve empiricism, while others subjected historians to literary criticism.[4] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn4) This certainly encourages historians to be wary of such attitudes and to less trusting of sources. The term post-modernism is an umbrella label which encompasses, post structuralism, the linguistic turn and post-Marxism. The advantages, of post-Marxism for example, can be easily seen. Post-Marxism encompasses reversionary responses to Marxism, which include the feminist approach to Marxist historiography.[5] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn5) The resulting attempt to amend the flaws of Marxist historiography in that respect certainly can be argued to have had a beneficial impact upon the Marxist paradigms used to understand the past.

However, postmodernism has come under considerable attack from some historians. Some have even argued that it has been responsible for a drop in the popularity of history as an academic discipline in the latter part of the 20th century. To elaborate the proportion of high school students in the United States of America who studied history in the 1960’s was approximately 2/3 but by the 1990’s that figure had dropped to just 20%. To further illustrate this trend there were 45,000 history graduates in the United States of America in 1970, however by 1990 there only 20,000 and this drop was during a period of general increase in college enrolment.[6] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn6) Some historians, notably C. Van Woodward, have attributed at least a portion of the blame for this trend on the influence of postmodernist attitudes and criticisms towards history.[7] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn7)

Others argue that postmodernism is inherently flawed. For example, if we accept that all interpretations of historical events and evidence are equally valid, or in this case, equally invalid and subjective, then it follows that idea; near universally acknowledged as incorrect, bias and even offensive, hold the same legitimacy as any other view. To take an example, postmodernism must offer holocaust denial is a legitimate position to take despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, because post-modernism dictates that all the evidence will be bias and lacking objectivity. This leads to the conclusion that no historical evidence can be viewed objectively and in turn no historian’s interpretation of the past can be accepted, thus removing the possibility of their being a historical ‘fact’. If post-modern views are to be taken at face value, historians are denied the ability to contend claims which lack any obvious merit.[8] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn8) In opposition to the views of some post-modernists, Keith Windshuttle argues that “there are a great many facts or propositions about history that are not subject to any doubt or uncertainty at all.”[9] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn9) He then goes on to suggest that to a large number of these facts “no sane person would question”.[10] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn10)

Some critics of post-modernity also suggest that it is self contradictory. To take an example, Keith Jenkins a proponent of post-modern ideals regarding history in one essay described one interpretation of one of Derrida’s text as being “mind-blowing “wrong””.[11] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn11) Perez Zagorin claims that this is a self contradiction typical of post-modern theory, claiming to undermine objective knowledge, while at the same time asserting that it knows something.[12] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn12) Thus if, as argued, post-modernists theories are self contradictory, then they can have little major advantages to the study of history.

In conclusion, post-modernism can offer the study of history a perspective on the past which highlights the fundamental lack of an absolute truth. Thus highlighting the flaws in empiricism and allowing historians to develop debate taking new ideas into account and resulting in further research into historical matters. However, a fair argument can be constructed suggesting that post-modernism should not be taken to an extent that all historical interpretation is rendered false. As stated by C. Behan McCullagh, a historian can collect enough evidence to support a view that it is quite reasonable to believe it to be true.[13] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftn13) This view accepts that an absolute truth can not be supported, but that historians can still be almost certainly correct and make a realistic contribution to how we understand the past. Post-modern theoretical models hold more disadvantages for historical study than advantages unless they are placed in a fittingly loose context. Even then, some have argued that rise of post-modernism has led to the academic profession of history being damaged.

[Invader Zim]

Notes

[1] C. Behan McCullagh, The logic of History: Putting Postmodernism in Perspective, (New York, 2004), pp. 2-6.

[2] Ibid, 30.

[3] Ibid, pp. 2-6.

[4] Matt Perry, Marxism and History, (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 129.

[5] Ibid, p, 130.

[6] Keith Windshuttle, 'A Critique of the Postmodern Turn In Western Historiography', Turningpoints in Historiography: A Cross Cultural Perspective, (e.d) Q. Edward Wang, Georg G. Iggers, (Rochester, 2002), p. 271.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid, p. 275.

[9] Ibid. p. 280.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Keith Jenkins, 'A Postmodern Reply to Perez Zagorin', History and Theory, Vol. 39, No. 2 (May, 2000), p. 190.

[12] Perez Zagorin, 'Rejoinder to a Postmodernist', History and Theory, Vol. 39, No. 2 (May, 2000), p. 202.
(http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1048850#_ftnref11)
[13] C. Behan McCullagh, The logic of History: Putting Postmodernism in Perspective, (New York, 2004), p. 194.

[Luís Henrique]

Well Cherry Picked, I can do that too. However, Evans pretty much addresses this himself, in a responce to the criticism that he defended (as you seem to be claiming) an outdated empiricist approach to history: -

As you see, you stick to equating two different things:

1. Considering History a science; and
2. defending an outdated empiricist approach to History.

Those two things, however, are not the same, as even a positivist historian like Elton can understand:


The natural sciences have, it would seem, virtually abandoned the concepts of truth and falsehood; phenomena once regarded as objectively true are now seen to be only a statistical abstraction from random variables, and the accusing finger of the uncertainty principle further insists that, since observation alters a phenomenon, nothing is capable of b[ei]ng studied except after it is changed from the state in which it was meant to have been investigated. Practising scientists have therefore permitted the philosopher to remove the word ‘true’ from their vocabulary and to substitute some such phrase as ‘more probable’, ‘more accurately descriptive’, ‘more aesthetically’ or ‘intellectually satisfying’. This has not stopped scientists from continuing their efforts to investigate and understand nature, and in so far as it has reduced their positivist pride in the possession of the only strictly based truth the new philosophy may be thought of as gain. But historians have always been inclined to doubt the value, even the possibility, of their studies; they require not the new humility preached in the wake of Heisenberg, but some return to the assurance of the nineteenth century that the work they are doing deals with reality.
PS. Why has this thread now been moved to science? I thought we had already been over this and you had concluded it was best in Theory. Now it is in science, I suggest it be moved to history.By mistake. I was trying to move a thread on veganism there (after overcoming the temptation to trash it), and moved this one accidentaly. It is now restored to its former place.

Lu&#237;s Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Moreover, since Ghosh also argues that it is illegitimate to describe anyone as postmodernist unless they describe themselves as such, he will presumably have to accept my insistence that I am not a Rankean even though he calls me one. Insofar as In Defence of History endorses 'Rankeanism', it is only in the sense of insisting that the methods of source-criticism introduced, not in the last few decades, but in the mid-nineteenth century by Leopold von Ranke himself, are still valid for historians today when they are analysing documents in the archive. This does not imply endorsement of Ranke's whole theory of history, however, still less of the way his name has been invoked by methodologically conservative historians wishing to reinstate political and constitutional history at the centre of the discipline, as the book makes abundantly clear in its critical discussion of both these topics.

Well, if I understand what Evans is saying, he is denying he is a Rankean. Easy stuff - I am not a Rankean myself, and I think History is a science. So not being a Rankean does not imply believing History is not a science, and you are still to provide some evidence that Evans believes it is not. Your reading process seems to be interesting, for you seem to be able to derive consequences from a text that I am completely incapable to follow...

His beef with Rankeanism, besides, seems to be more that neorankeans would try to reinstate political and constitutional History (hero-battle History, I would call it) as the centre of the discipline - than Ranke's outdated conception of History. As I disbelieve entirely the Rankean positivist notions that an "absolute" truth can be found by historical research, I can claim to be, to that extent, even less Rankean than Evans - and I still believe History is a science.

The difference between you and me is not that I believe History can attain absolute truth while you don't. I fairly certain that historians cannot attain absolute truth, no less than you are. Where we differ is that you - naively - believe physicians or biologists can attain absolute truth, and I am as certain that they can't as I am certain historians can't. In fact, I do not believe science is the search of an absolute truth; it is a process to get closer and closer to understand reality, but "absolute truth" is impossible in any discipline - science is, and will forever be, always wrong (only religion is always right, and this is perhaps the strongest reason that we should prefer science to religion).

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Also you seem to have misunderstood what Evans was saying about Carr and his position; which I find odd because it is stated in very simple terms. Evans is not saying that Carr thought history was a science, or a social-science, but that Carr encouraged the development of the social sciences. Carr himself was a social scientist as well as a historian, holding the chair of International Politics at Aberystwyth university at one point. Carr's entire argument was that history was not a science because it does not deal in empiricism, but that the gap between the two can reduced.

My impression is that you are overunderstanding Carr; I don't think he ever hold such position. What Carr argued is that there were fundamental methodological differences between social sciences, including History, and natural sciences - which is what positivists denied. In that respect, of course, I entirely agree with Carr, and have debated some of our positivist comrades here (especially Noxion, and to a lesser extent, Rosa Liechtenstein) exactly on that line.


As for Hobsbawm, he is clearly making refernce to the ultra-reletivism of individuals such as Keith Jenkins. If you associate that with my position it is abundendly clear you neither understand my postion, the position of individuals such as Jenkins and the point that Hobsbawm was making. Incidentally, you could also have picked much better examples, I posted that link because it contained important writings from both sides of the debate; and those in the middle.

I think your position sounds very unclear; you deny that historians can attain any objectivity, and quote a historian (Evans), saying exactly the opposite, as backing you. In fact, I think your position is rather oscillating than unclear; you don't seem to have found a firm ground in-between historical materialism and post-modern idealism.

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

1. Considering History a science; and
2. defending an outdated empiricist approach to History.

The former is an example of the latter. the idea that history is a science relies upon "outdated empiricist approach[s] to History".


and you are still to provide some evidence that Evans believes it is not.

You have more or less provided it yourself: -

"By the 1980s, therefore, the long search for a scientific method of history had failed to yield any definitive results."

Evans spends that entire chapter, which that quote is taken from, pointing out when history has claimed to be a science and then shown how that those views were debunked; and as the quote you provided shows, "failed to yield any definative results".

As I recall, in one of his responces to his critics, he argues (and I'm paraphrasing here) that history can be practised as an art, but that it can also be approached as a science in a weak definition of the word. He does not say that it is a science. He does however note (and the quote you provided is a prime example) that there is, of this point, no scientific method of history.


Where we differ is that you - naively - believe physicians or biologists can attain absolute truth

Not at all, scientists can drawn upon empirical evidence in order to support their theories; historians cannot. Scientists base their findings upon study of observable trends in the universe; historians don't.

[Luís Henrique]

I posted that link because it contained important writings from both sides of the debate; and those in the middle.

So... there is a debate, which is what you have been denying.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

You have more or less provided it yourself: -

"By the 1980s, therefore, the long search for a scientific method of history had failed to yield any definitive results."

Yes, it failed to yield any definitive results. But the claim is not that a definitive result hasn't been attained - it is that a definitive result is impossible, and that that impossibility has been demonstrated. I don't think Evans subscribes to that latter opinion.


Evans spends that entire chapter, which that quote is taken from, pointing out when history has claimed to be a science and then shown how that those views were debunked; and as the quote you provided shows, "failed to yield any definative results".

No, he isn't showing how those views were debunked - he saying that those views are, at this moment, under attack.


Not at all, scientists can drawn upon empirical evidence in order to support their theories; historians cannot. Scientists base their findings upon study of observable trends in the universe; historians don't.

And frequently they find that some results are beyond scientifical analysis. So?

I stick to my opinion: your views of science are, at best, Popperian. Which means, positivist and outdated.

Luís Henrique

[Invader Zim]

So... there is a debate, which is what you have been denying.

Lu&#237;s Henrique

I said from the word 'Go' that there were a few very old or dead people who took the opposite line. Most of those who are on the 'science' side of the debate are old or dead. As Evans noted, by the 80's the failure of the 'science' side had become more than apparent. That a few historians come along every 20 years (more or less ending in the 80s) or so and attempt to argue that, despite all the evidence failures of 'history as a science', history is after all a science doesn't disprove the point that hardly anyone believes that history is a science any more.


But the claim is not that a definitive result hasn't been attained - it is that a definitive result is impossible,After more than a century of repeated attempts to justify the claim that history can be a science, and repeated failure, it is hardly unreasonable to reject the concept; as the majority have.


No, he isn't showing how those views were debunkedIn some places he clearly does point out that various ideas have been clear failures:

"Quantification and statistics had thus signally failed to deliver the 'scientific' certainties which their advocates had proclaimed."


So?So, science is based on empiricsm, history is not. You point out that scientists cannot always analyse empirical evidence to test their theories, but historians never can.



I stick to my opinion: your views of science are, at best, Popperian. Which means, positivist and outdated.But what does this say of your view of history? You youself quoted a professional historian writing a historiography of this debate concluding that the idea that history is a science is one that has failed, and because it is manifestly a failure has come under the most strenuous attack and degree of rejection in its entire life; and his largely been rejected for decades and decades.