On the Analysis of History and the Interdependence of the Social Sciences

Abstract

One intellectual excitement has . . . been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following another as wave follows wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize ... the play of the contingent and the unforeseen. H. A. L. Fischer[The scientist] says, ‘I will seek for relationships among events that seem always to hold in fact, and when it occurs that they do not hold, I will search for additional conditions and a broader model that will (until new exceptions are discovered) restore my power of prediction.‘ Herbert A. SimonThe views of some historians and philosophers of history as to the possibility of fruitful historical generalization seem at odds with the underlying methodology of the other social sciences. A formal model of the world historical process is here presented within which this apparent contradiction is seen to be resolvable in terms of modern theories of probability and stochastic processes. This is done by giving rigorous form to procedures and statements in the social sciences. A formal treatment of the dependence of an investigation in one discipline on previous studies both in that area and in other social and natural sciences then follows naturally.