Is History a Science?

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Is History a Science?

Both the term history and science have many different connotations, so it is difficult to comment on whether they can be put into the same classification. Basically, the way in which history is studied would suggest that it is a science, mainly because the facts are all there, but a historian must find them and piece them together to complete the discovery.

In science, the discovery of penicillin was made partly by mistake. Experiments in a laboratory on one subject stumbled across different results, which could be attributed to the discovery of penicillin. This is a very similar situation to where a historian may be involved in an archaeological investigation of the ruins of a roman villa. The search could yield new findings, which could change all previous perceptions of the Romans, for example finding evidence that the Romans had electricity.

History is studied to gain an understanding of human activity in the past- from the time humans evolved to the present day. This reason is identical to the reason science exists- to gain an understanding of the universe around us, and everything in it. However, History is just a small branch of this, making History more like Biology, Chemistry and Physics as being a sector under the main heading science.

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Whereas science can be recreated in the laboratory (almost everything can be turned into a table sized experiment, even universes apparently) history works in a slightly different way. Some would argue it is impossible to do a controlled scientific experiment on a historical event, but there are two arguments to this. How about a police investigation of an abduction? The police would stage a reconstruction hoping to prompt people into reporting any abnormal events they may have seen, but forgotten previously. This would be recreating history so as to create a fuller understanding of events that took place. Another argument ...

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