The Last Mile: Making History a Science

David Meskill, Bard High School Early College Queens

What is it that historians do? Is history a science, or a humanity? What, really, is the difference? Can history be objective? Over the years the answers have varied, and even the meanings of such terms as scientific and objective have been protean. Recently historians at Stanford, Harvard, and elsewhere have weighed in on these debates, promoting a science of history. The idea has several facets. It has meant drawing on neuroscience and the “deep history of the brain” to explore the role of emotions in history. It has also meant the use of macro-scale comparisons. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it has meant applying new kinds of scientifically-generated evidence, perhaps most importantly, ancient DNA, to human history. This is a bold, potentially revolutionary initiative. Yet we can go further still. The Harvard and Stanford scholars suggest that the new results from science and the old ways of doing history should complement each other: each can contribute something the other can’t. When independent streams of evidence from science and from history converge, we have what Michael McCormick, borrowing from the nineteenth-century philosopher of science William Whewell, calls “consilience.” The implication is that while history can be complemented by scientific findings, history’s traditional ways are sound. History is incomplete, not defective. In two previous papers delivered at the SSHA, I challenged this view, arguing that historians’ methods are, in fact, deeply flawed. In this paper I will first recapitulate my main critiques of historical practice. The bulk of my paper will then suggest what a reformed historical method might look like. In short, I propose that history not only needs to integrate results from the sciences, as the Harvard-Stanford scholars recommend, but should become more scientific in a more thorough-going way than even they suggest.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 178. On History and Historical Sociology