On a Difference Between the Natural Sciences and History

Abstract

Convenience and tradition have long favored a-division of the whole field of empirical enquiry into two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive parts, namely the natural sciences (briefly, science) and the historical disciplines (briefly, history). The division, which is based on a prima facie contrast between the aspirations and achievements of research in the natural sciences on the one hand and historical research on the other, gives rise to a question which once again engages the attention of philosophers: Is the contrast only apparent or does it rest on a structural feature which is characteristic of scientific but, at most, incidental to historical thinking? The structural features which are usually adduced to justify a deep theoretical opposition between science and history are not sufficient. For example, the search for causal and other predictively useful generalizations is not peculiar to science, just as the concern with unrepeatable events is not peculiar to history. Similarly, the description and explanation of human actions, as opposed to externally observed behavior, is a task not only for history but also for the incipient sciences of anthropology and sociology as well as for economic history, conceived as a branch of economics rather than as the history of economic institutions.