History, Science, and Historiography: Goals, Methods, Challenges
What is History?
History is defined in the lecture as an empirical account of change over time in human society.
Empirical means based on evidence gathered from sensory experience; in history, evidence typically comes from documents.
History is fundamentally comparative: data and comparison have driven science and history for centuries.
There is no science without data and no history without evidence; history relies on documents rather than experiments.
History is a narrative: all history is an inherently selected version of a very complex process; there is no completely objective history. Even the best history is selective.
The idea that the perfect history exists is rejected: "the perfect is the enemy of the good" in historical work.
History often focuses on development, growth, degeneration, and transformation rather than a purely horizontal slice of time, though both forms are possible.
The choice of which stories to tell about causes of change reflects historians’ decisions and what the public cares about.
The aim of the three opening questions for the course (history, science, and how science changes) is to establish working definitions that can withstand hard nosed scrutiny throughout the course.
The course will cover three components today:
A brief intro to history itself
The goals, methods, and challenges of history
A brief history of the history (how genres of historical narratives have changed over time)
Why tell history? Possible pragmatic answer: to fulfill academic requirements (e.g., a broad college breadth requirement) and to gain broader understanding; the lecturer suggests there is more to it by the end of the semester.
Three foundational questions framed for the course are deliberately difficult and require careful definitions that apply across cases and times.
History’s Goals, Methods, and Challenges
Goals of history (two levels, with a layered on top):
Level 1: documenting the past — what happened and when, and in what sequence. This is the basic, somewhat “grade-school” task of memorizing names and dates.
Level 2: causal accounts — why things happened and the relative importance of different causes (the causal weight or magnitude).
The value of Level 1 facts is as the foundation for Level 2 reasoning; knowing a date like Galileo first observing the moons of Jupiter in January 1610 helps interpret the Scientific Revolution, but dates alone don’t explain significance.
The challenge: distinguishing which causes matter more; not all prior events contribute equally to a later outcome (e.g., the 9/11 attacks vs other events in weighing the lead to the Afghanistan invasion).
How history is studied (the historical method):
History is fundamentally evidence-based and empirical, like science, but it uses documents rather than controlled experiments.
Hypothesis formation: historians formulate hypotheses (answers to certain why-questions) based on evidence and test them against the historical record.
Unlike controlled scientific experiments, history cannot reset the past; evidence is interpreted against a fixed dataset of surviving sources.
If new evidence appears or existing evidence is reassessed, hypotheses are revised to fit the fuller record.
The main sources are historical documents; these provide windows into past events and motivations but come with limits.
The challenges of history (and what makes it distinctive):
Fragmentary evidence base: much of the past is lost; examples given include Aristotle’s works: Roman catalogues list 200 works, but only about 30 survive today; thus, we know only a fraction of what was written.
Analogy to missing media: being told a story from only 15% of a movie or only 15% of pages of a novel illustrates how incomplete the evidence can be.
Survivorship bias and reliability of sources: surviving documents may be biased or incomplete; e.g., a noble’s diary vs. queen’s account of a rebellion.
Efficient methodology theory (historiography): questions about what drives historical change (military, political, economic, social factors) and how to weigh them, which are not universally agreed upon and are constantly revised.
The theory of history (historiography) is dynamic; different eras and cultures emphasize different drivers of change.
The role of evidence: what counts as evidence in history?
Evidence is primarily historical documents, but can include other records (parliamentary, court, tax, marriage records) that become more or less useful as theories and methods evolve.
We test hypotheses by checking consistency with the historical record; when evidence contradicts a hypothesis, it is revised.
The value of “why” questions in history:
Why questions are intuitive in both history and science, but they require setting parameters to be meaningful (e.g., assume certain populations, time frames, or physical laws).
Without clear parameters, why questions can become unbounded and unsatisfying.
The course will explore why questions by restricting parameters and offering explanations that connect to larger structures (society, economy, culture).
The chain of disciplines and the limits of universal explanation:
The lecturer emphasizes that history sits at the top of a chain of phenomena (sociology, psychology, neurology, biology, chemistry, physics) and that deeper questions in other disciplines require specialized study.
Different fields offer different levels of analysis and significance; history is not inherently superior to other disciplines, just different.
The practical approach to history in this course:
A balance between telling a straightforward narrative and acknowledging the broader complexity that scholars in graduate study address.
The course aims to provide useful tools for understanding the past at an accessible level while recognizing deeper, more complex questions exist.
The History of History (Historiography)
Historiography: the study of how history is told — the theory and methods of telling historical narratives; how historians’ perspectives and frameworks shape the history itself.
Herodotus (the father of history):
Early narrative that aimed to tell causal accounts of historical events (Greco-Persian Wars).
He combined the sequence of events with explanations of why they happened (causal chains).
He used testimonies from witnesses (e.g., soldiers, travelers) but acknowledged potential bias and reliability issues (e.g., dishonesty or disciplinary fear from commanders).
His focus tended to highlight battles, kings, and political leaders—i.e., a traditional, elite-centered history.
Limitation: questions whether warfare and elites are the only or most important drivers of history; recognition that this is a limited account of the past.
A shift around 1800: Karl Marx and a new genre of historical narrative
Marx emphasized economic relations as the fundamental forces of history: who owns land, who works it, who owns ships, who sails them.
The rise of class analysis replaced sole attention to kings and wars as the primary engine of historical change.
Marxian history integrates individuals within broader social and economic structures; the actions of individuals are meaningful insofar as they relate to class dynamics and economic conditions.
The two extremes illustrate contrasting approaches to telling history:
Herodotus: individual biographies, kings, battles, and the preservation of fame of notable achievements; focus on elites and warfare.
Marx: structural forces, economic relations, and class conflict as the drivers of historical transformation.
The course will move between these two perspectives::
Acknowledge the mutual influence between scientific ideas and social contexts.
Show how scientific ideas are shaped by societal structures and, in turn, reshape society.
The period covered spans roughly 800 BCE to 1750 CE (with attention to the interplay of social and scientific change).
The goal is to illustrate that history and science are intertwined and mutually influential, not isolated domains.
A Brief History of History (Genres and Change Over Time)
The lecture previews that genres of historical narratives have changed over time: from elite-focused, narrative battles to broader, structural analyses, and to more nuanced, interdisciplinary approaches.
The idea is that as theory improves, new kinds of documents become useful to historians (e.g., tax records, marriage records, court records) and open up new sources for analysis.
The course’s time frame will emphasize how the mutual influence between scientific ideas and their social contexts has unfolded from antiquity through the early modern period and into the early modern European scientific revolution.
Examples and Illustrations from the Lecture
The industrial revolution (as a core historical question):
Why did Europe industrialize around the year 1800?
The central technology (steam engine) did not require cutting-edge science; the steam engine emerged from mining needs (to pump water) rather than from Newtonian physics.
A large urban labor force was required; most people were rural prior to 1800; rising agricultural yields freed labor for factories.
Demand for textiles and cotton rose; textiles were central to industrialization; cotton supply came from colonies relying on enslaved labor.
The question of empire and colonialism: how resources (cotton) were produced and transported; how Britain came to dominate colonies.
Coal availability in Britain supported steam power; coal use was linked to wood shortages caused by population growth and urban heating needs.
The chain of explanations is long and interdependent: enclosure of common land (for profit), physiocracy (agricultural improvement), population growth, urbanization, expansion of textile demand, colonial networks, and coal/water dynamics.
The full story would require many other sub-stories and courses (enclosure, population growth, colonial economics, etc.).
A parallel example from science: why rain occurs
Everyday explanation: moisture condenses and falls as rain.
Deeper chain: water evaporates from oceans; evaporation depends on temperature and pressure; why does evaporation happen at all? Intramolecular forces in molecules; atoms and subatomic particles; why particles have charges; etc. The deeper you go, the more you must explain using broader frameworks (subatomic physics, particle physics, etc.).
The point: in both history and science, “why” explanations require frames and layers, and the deeper you go, the more complex the explanation becomes; questions about ultimate causes can become intractable without defining permissible levels of inquiry.
The magnets example and the ice example (to illustrate levels of explanation):
If you ask why two magnets repel, explanations depend on the audience’s prior knowledge: basic everyday talk vs. physics of magnetic fields.
If you ask why ice is slippery, you can explain with surface-level observation (ice is slippery) or with deeper physics (water films on ice due to pressure and phase changes; ice expansion upon freezing; different behavior of ice vs other solids).
The point is that deeper questioning requires an agreed framework and boundaries; otherwise, explanations become endless and unfocused.
Practical Implications for This Course
The course will address three fundamental questions with careful definitions, recognizing limits of absolute answers.
Students should expect a rigorous, evidence-based approach that accepts fragments and biases in sources while seeking the best possible reconstruction.
The course will emphasize historiography (how we tell history) and will illustrate how historical narratives evolve as theories improve and new sources become available.
The overall aim is to build a comprehensive, usable set of notes and understandings that can replace the original source material for study purposes, without claiming an impossible objectivity.
Key Dates, Concepts, and References Mentioned
Key questions for the course:
What is history?
When is science?
How does science change over time?
Core definitions and statements:
History as an empirical account of change over time in human society: based on evidence, typically from documents; a narrative; inherently selective; not completely objective.
The two levels of historical goals: Level 1 (documentation: what happened, when, in what sequence) and Level 2 (causal accounts: why it happened and which causes mattered).
The role of evidence and data: no history without evidence; evidence is often documentary.
Notable figures and concepts:
Herodotus (the “father of history”): causal accounts, focus on battles and elites, use of witness testimonies, potential biases, critique of elite-centered history.
Karl Marx: economic relations as fundamental forces; class dynamics; ownership and labor; historical change driven by economic structure.
Historiography: the study and evolution of methods for telling history; the two main traditions represented by Herodotus and Marx in the lecture.
Historical examples and dates mentioned:
Galileo’s telescopic observations of the moons of Jupiter (January 1610).
Industrial Revolution context: around 1800 in Europe; enclosure movements; rising agricultural yields in the eighteenth century; urban labor force growth; cotton/textiles; colonial empire and enslaved labor; coal and steam power; wood shortages due to population growth; physiocracy; broader economic and societal drivers.
British colonial empire dynamics and earlier empires (Roman era; 16th–17th centuries context) referenced to illustrate the evolution of empire and global trade.
The Great Recession (as a historical cause example) and explanations like: banks repackaging subprime mortgages.
Paradoxes and philosophical points:
Why-questions require parameters; otherwise, explanations chase infinite regress or become meaningless.
Even in science, asking why things happen requires a framework (e.g., physics, chemistry, biology) and eventually reaches different levels of explanation.
Broad themes for the course duration: 800 BCE to 1750 CE; mutual influence between scientific ideas and social contexts; openness to revision as theory progresses; ongoing discovery of new kinds of evidence.
Notation and formulas:
Mass of a proton (example of a concrete numerical reference):