HISTORY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES RECONSIDERED

Abstract

SUMMARY The historian assumes the obligation to make a synthesis of all of man's activities and has therefore a larger responsability than the social scientists in their various fields of knowledge. It is difficult to identify a social science approach to history or a distinctive social science method or procedure. At least the report of the Committee on Historiography which contains a lengthy discussion of the proper method in the social sciences does not successfully differentiate it from the method of the so-called exact sciences. One of the serious problems confronting the historian is how to acquire the best current knowledge available in the social sciences. Indeed to do so necessitates learning the technical languages which have been developed in these complex and rapidly expanding fields of knowledge, especially since one of the languages now regularly employed is mathematics on a higher level than is normally reached by historians. There also remains the more fundamental problem of whether or not the findings and procedures in one highly developed branch of knowledge can be fruitfully or justifiably applied in another field. Disastrous examples to the contrary are easy to locate. Two types of historical problem on which the historian needs and would welcome assistance from the social scientist are (I) what has been the effect in history of the change in psychological experience that occurred when so large a proportion of the population grew up in a one or two child family instead of a five or six child family? (2) What are the changes in political and social history resulting from the fact that so large a proportion of the population are now employees instead of being independent economic units? The danger of social science history is that if abused or distorted it may dehumanize history. There is poetry in life. And the history, or science, that omits the poetry from life is both untrue and dangerous.