Historiography as science
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- Two Historiographic Roads to Nomad
history
- By Tom Verso, H-History-and-Theory, 30 May 2006. Causality
is the point where the historiographic road forks into the
‘narrative’ and the ‘social
scientific’ branches. 40 years before David Landes and
Charles Tilly stipulated “the three salient
characteristics of social scientific history: aggregation,
theory & empiricism, and systematic comparison”,
Toynbee was writing history as such.
- History as science
- A discussion on the H-History-and-theory list, May 2006. A
rather basic question about the nature and defining
characteristics of science—beyond its predictive
accuracy. We may be under the burden of a late 19th-century
(positivist) conception of natural science. Why history
could not be just area of knowledge and/or attempt to
explain the human past? Is something which is not called
“science” or “scientific” any less
valauble?
- Ebb Tide—Social Science History
- By Tom Verso, H-History-and-Theory, 8 August 2006. By
refusing to accept even the possibility of social laws,
generalizations or even classifications, historians
(generally) have ceded the most significant social behaviors
(e.g. economic, political, demographic, etc.) to the social
sciences. In turn, they redefined the essence of their craft
as narrative writing placing great emphasis on the unique
(individuals and events) and writing style.