Talk:Historical science

Article needed
I believe that there should be an article on "Historical science". I have found Jared Diamond's description of the differences between historical sciences -- such as archaeology, evolutionary biology, and climatology -- and nonhistorical sciences -- physics, chemistry, molecular biology -- to be exceedingly helpful in my personal reflections on the nature of the scientific enterprise.

I noticed today (30-Aug-2010) that section 1.1 of the article Paleontology bears the headline A historical science and gives a partial list of historical sciences. I see a footnote referring to a 2002 paper by C. E. Cleland entitled "Methodological and Epistemic Differences between historical science and experimental science".

So now I have two sources to refer to: Diamond, and Cleland.

The fuller citation for Diamond is:

Diamond, Jared. 1997. "The Future of Human History as a Science". Epilogue to: Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years. London: Vintage (a division of Random House).

(The relevant passage for me is on pp. 421-424 in the 1998 paperback.)

Dr Diamond has not demonstrated that Human History can become recognized as a historical science. What he does accomplish for me in this Epilogue is clearly show that many recognized sciences are historical rather than experimental.

At any rate, I believe that, at the least, "Historical science" should NOT be redirected to "History". I strongly support the development of an article of this name. I don't consider myself qualified to write this article, although a stub could easily be made by adaptating that section of the Paleontology article.

Ah! I sought an article entitled "Experimental science" and found that this phrase redirected to "Experiment". So I guess I'd really like to see TWO new articles. 213.185.105.98 (talk) 20:05, 30 August 2010 (UTC) Douglas W. Boone

from Palentology page:

Paleontology is one of the historical sciences, along with archaeology, geology, astronomy, cosmology, philology and history itself. This means that it aims to describe phenomena of the past and reconstruct their causes. Hence it has three main elements: description of the phenomena; developing a general theory about the causes of various types of change; and applying those theories to specific facts. When trying to explain past phenomena, paleontologists and other historical scientists often construct a set of hypotheses about the causes and then look for a smoking gun, a piece of evidence that indicates that one hypothesis is a better explanation than others. Sometimes the smoking gun is discovered by a fortunate accident during other research. For example, the discovery by Luis Alvarez and Walter Alvarez of an iridium-rich layer at the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary made asteroid impact and volcanism the most favored explanations for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

The other main type of science is experimental science, which is often said to work by conducting experiments to disprove hypotheses about the workings and causes of natural phenomena – note that this approach cannot confirm a hypothesis is correct, since some later experiment may disprove it. However, when confronted with totally unexpected phenomena, such as the first evidence for invisible radiation, experimental scientists often use the same approach as historical scientists: construct a set of hypotheses about the causes and then look for a "smoking gun". --OtisDixon (talk) 20:41, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Quotes from Diamondl:

421 Historical Sciences in the broad sense share many features that set them apart from non-historical sciences such as physics, chemistry, and molecular biology. I would single out four: methodology, causation, prediction and complexity. In physics the chief method for gaining knowledge is the laboratory experiment by which one manipulate the parameter whose effect is in question, executes parallel control experiments with that parameter held constant, holds other parameters constant throughout, replicate both experimental manipulation and the control experimental, and obtains quantitative data. This strategy, which works well in chemistry and molecular biology, is so identified with science in the minds of many people that experimentation is often held to be the essence of the scientific method. But laboratory experimentation can obviously play little to no role in many of the historical sciences. One cannot interrupt galaxy formation, start and stop hurricanes and ice ages, experimentally exterminate grizzly bears in a few national parks, or rerun the course of dinosaur evolution. 423 Physicists and chemists can formulate universal deterministic laws at the macroscopic level, but biologists and historians can formulate only statistical trends. Still another way of describing the complexity and unpredictability of historical systems, despite their ultimate determinacy, is to note that long chains of causation may separate final effects from ultimate causes lying outside the domain of that field of science. For example, the dinosaurs may have been exterminated by the impact of an asteroid whose orbit was completely determined by the laws of classical mechanics. But if there had been any paleontologists living 67 million years ago, they could not have predicted the dinosaurs' demise, because asteroids belong to a field of science otherwise remote from dinosaur biology. Jared Diamond, 1999, pp528, W.W. Norton & Company, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The fates of Human Societies.

Requested move 24 July 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved – No support for primarytopic takeover for a maybe-to-exist article; no prejudice against trying again after the article is accepted. (non-admin closure) Dicklyon (talk) 05:13, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Historical science → Historical science (disambiguation) – To make room for the draft article currently at User:Swpb/m/Historical science, which the third entry of the dab refers to. This topic is known primarily (perhaps exclusively) as "historical science", while the other two topics on the dab are only sometimes referred to this way. — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 17:01, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid that you can't use Rationalwiki as a source. I'm surprised to see Sicily sciences included and a casual search shows the phrase has several meanings, eg . Doug Weller  talk 18:12, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
 * As a reference, no – as a source of freely-licensed text copied into Wikipedia with its own references, I believe it's allowed. According to WP:COPYOPEN, that means citing each copied paragraph with footnotes like a reference. Anyway, there are other sources on the talk page of the dab that can be integrated. The point with meanings is that this is the primary and only term for this topic, not so with the others on the dab. — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 18:28, 24 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.