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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sepulchrave II" data-source="post: 7474713" data-attributes="member: 4303">FWIW, here are my 4a.m. insomniac thoughts. I won't make any ambitious prophecies about eternity, though <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />:1.    History is an intrinsically trans-disciplinary discipline; I would argue that in order to practice “good” history, reasonable fluency is required in sociology, psychology, anthropology, philology, climatology etc. Further, history makes routine use of data gathered by scientific methods: carbon dating, materials science, dendrochronolgy, core samples, DNA evidence, molecular archaeology etc. This does not make history science, as historical judgements still proceed from inference; what it does do, however, is provide lots of data, so hold that thought for a second.2.    Caveat: We are pattern-seeking apes. Where no pattern exists, we try to invent them.3.    There have been a number of appeals to science by historians over the past two centuries. Comte had a positivist model; the French and German academics who established the modern practice of history in the 19th century saw themselves as “scientists;” Ranke’s (completely debunked) historiographical theories; Bloch; the Annales school of historigraphy; more recently, human cycles theory and cliodynamics have attempted to model “big picture” historical processes. None of this makes history science, either; but it starts to move things in the right direction. Most importantly, it describes the recurring human desire to construe history in objective, measurable terms which can then be used predictively. Humans are also nothing, if not tenacious apes.4.    Verifying historical data is inherently problematic. Because we cannot observe history directly, all historical pronouncements are probabilistic inferences. Bayes’ theorem – and probably others, of which I have no understanding – offer ways to frame these pronouncements. 5.    Further caveat: Bayes’ can also be used to justify all kinds of whacko pseudoscience.  Garbage in, garbage out, and all that.6.    We need big computers to crunch lots of data.7.    Prediction: History-as-science – if achievable – will concern itself (initially, at least) with large, long-term processes. It will involve predicting the interactions of fields with varying degrees of uncertainty. Perhaps it will resemble quantum theory more than history-as-we-understand-it-today.</blockquote>

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