HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE IN THE SCIENCES

The commonly perceived distinction between the so-called historical and scientific disciplines is indefensible, because a historical perspective is necessary for a scientific understanding of the universe. What is called ‘laws of nature’ and all other scientific theories are based on previous knowledge and/or assumptions and must remain forever hypothetical, because we can never make all conceivable and/or necessary observations concerning the entire universe or any chosen part of it (imagine trying to define all the properties of the pencil in your hand. Can you do it?). There is no difference between the nature of ‘historical knowledge’ and the so-called ‘ahistorical knowledge’ in terms of methodology and logic. It has been argued that history is concerned with narratives about individual cases whereas science attempts explanation of generalities. Those who defend this view overlook the fact that the ‘universe’ itself is an individual and our attempts to find out about it are concerned with that individual only. Our difficulties in that endeavour stem from the size of the universe which may even be infinite so far as we know. By contrast individual instances forming the research concern of historical disciplines are deemed finite and therefore ‘knowable’. But even parts of finite objects may not be accessible to observation making our ideas about these objects incomplete. Any complete statement concerning them must therefore remain hypothetical. Thus the assumed dichotomy between historical and ahistorical disciplines about dealing with generalities versus particulars is untenable, because it ignores the problem of induction posed by David Hume and the incompleteness of our databases in all interesting problems. As all ‘laws of nature’ are hypothetical (including the question whether nature has any laws at all) one must also pose the question of their immutability in time. As soon as such a question is posed, the problem becomes historical. Thus both in terms of their logic of discovery and their subject matters historical and ahistorical sciences show the same characters. In that regard a hierarchy of sciences as once imagined by Comte cannot be supported. In our view science is simply the way of acquiring knowledge about the world we live in and it cannot be compartmentalised.