Theory of Knowledge: Science and History

The following is one of my most prized possessions of the year, my TOK essay. I am proud to say that I scored very highly on it. Although the essay is based on an extract, the following essay still gives good insight on the differences between History and Science as an area of knowledge. Enjoy!

Matthew Tan

25^th August 2014

To what extent does the author substantiate his claim that the study of history can be pursued scientifically?

In the Epilogue of Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond attempts to compare and contrast one way of knowing with another: History with The Human Sciences. He writes that the method of studying and evaluating History is similar, if not directly the same as the ones conducted in science and thus should be classed as one. In order to test the possibility of his conjuncture, we must first compare the function and utility of the methodologies found within History and The Human Sciences and appraise the two or more that we find to be similar.

What I find personally find prodigious of Diamond is the fact that he does not state with finality that History is limited to human history exclusively; rather he also acknowledges the existence of the ice age, dinosaurs and the creation of this planet, eons before the existence of humankind. It is in this way that Diamond creates a substratum for his argument as there are many historical sciences such as “astronomy, climatology, ecology, evolutionary biology, geology and palaeontology” (Diamond 1998) which also specialise in this area of study; the era before humans and Diamond expresses this connection ebulliently throughout this entire synopsis. He substantiates this connection through four faculties: methodologies, causation, prediction and complexity. (Diamond 1998)

For clarification, ‘Historical science’ refers to academia which relies on no direct experimental data (Carol Cleland 2001) and would thus therefore have to be inferred from the natural phenomena that we see today. This is the first way that Diamond attempts to make his first conjunction: by relating the coherent theory of truth which is a methodology in History to cause and causation, the identification of trends and patterns and the analysis of the past which make up the fundamental ideology of Science. An example in physics would be the concept that two objects in collision would respond in conjunction with the Newton’s conservation of momentum; that it was the velocity of one ball that caused the other to change velocity due to a collision. In History, it would be the idea that it was Hitler who sparked the Second World War. However this is not a proficient comparison in itself; in many cases, science exploits the idea of only adjusting one factor under controlled conditions. Had there been no collision, the velocity of both balls will remain unchanged. This is impossible to regulate in pre-world war two conditions; it is impossible to say that had there not been Hitler in the whole series of events, World War two would not have occurred.  Even going back to pre-human history, supposing there are multiple hypothesis in these two areas of knowledge for the explanation of a naturally occurring phenomena, the hypothesis in natural sciences will be more explicit and unequivocal, if not less in frequency relative to those of history; the process of falsification is much more effective in the sciences than it is in history. This was stated by Diamond, who was under the postulation that “Each is plagued by the difficulty of performing replicated, controlled experiments… with the consequent impossibility of framing universal laws” (Diamond 1998). The flounder in this argument is that although he has stated many possibilities where they could be compared, he fails to recognise the extent science could be compared to history using this paradigm.

Diamond attempts to conjugate natural sciences and history through ‘Natural Experiments’, which are defined as observational studies which can be used to assess the outcomes and long term impacts when a group of organisms have been subjected to long term irregular conditions. For example, the study of a population who has taken more salt relative to another population to use as a basis of comparison in the effects of long term consumption of a different diet (Diamond 1998).  Granting that in terms of specific areas of study such as astrology in the study of stars and galaxies this may be so, Diamond fails to distinguish the difference between scientific experimentation and human experimentation in terms of behaviour. Disregarding the principle of quantum theory that states that the behaviour and characteristics of a photon will warp based on the condition of the presence of the observer, physics on a macroscopic scale will tend to always be constant; a ball colliding with a ball will always cause the both to change velocity whether the observer is present or not. This is antithetical to the Hawthorne effect, which states that people will modify an aspect of behaviour in response to the presence of an observer (Landsberger 1958). What Diamond fails to comment is the fact that humans are more likely to display the Hawthorne effect than any other organism on this planet on a macroscopic scale and it is this difference that is key to the separation between natural experiments conducting using historical methodologies and science methodologies.

After much extrapolation, one would conclude that History can be studied as a science. However we need to understand that there are many other situations and ideological issues that contradict what would be our current paradigm and we need to take that into account in the consideration of our outlook on this issue. Although the study of History and Natural sciences fundamentally involve the collection and analysis of data, the utilisation of two different methodologies, one from the natural sciences and one from history, can still produce two, if not more, different results and different values or interpretations of data that we have obtained. Keeping that in mind, the study of causation and consequence is much more complex in History than in the Natural Sciences that the application of the methodologies of both History and Natural Science will change the complexity of the study itself by a huge extent. However the possible benefits of employing these methodologies in conjunction with each other will create many more observations and perhaps a deeper understanding of our past.  

Cheers,

Matthew Tan