HISTORICAL SCIENCE AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

It is widely believed that there is a uniform, interdisciplinary method for the practice of “good” science irrespective of discipline. The paradigm for this universal, scientific method is classical experimental science. Classical experimental science stresses the use of experiments in controlled laboratory settings. But many scientific hypotheses cannot be directly tested in this manner. Historical hypotheses, which are common in geology, planetary science, evolutionary biology, and even astrophysics, provide good examples. Because prototypical historical hypotheses represent conjectures about the remote past (e.g., the Alvarez hypothesis for the end-Cretaceous extinctions) they cannot be tested by means of controlled, laboratory experiments; as I discuss, there is a fundamental differences between laboratory work aimed at sharpening attenuated, evidential traces discovered through field work or testing an auxiliary hypothesis associated with a prototypical historical hypothesis and the testing of a target hypothesis in experimental science. As a consequence, historical science is sometimes denigrated as inferior to experimental science. Drawing upon examples from diverse fields of historical science, I show that such claims are misguided. First, the reputed superiority of classical experimental research is based upon accounts of scientific methodology (inductivism and falsificationism) that are deeply flawed, both logically and as accounts of the actual practices of scientists. Second, although there are fundamental differences in methodology between classical experimental science and prototypical historical science, these differences are keyed to an objective and pervasive feature of nature, a time asymmetry of causation known as "the asymmetry of overdetermination." In short, the claim that historical research is methodologically inferior to experimental research cannot be sustained.