QUOTE: “To understand modern history (historical knowledge) one has to address three interconnected themes: 1) the character of the differences between history and other social sciences; 2) the degree to which history is a science, i.e. its similarity to other social sciences; 3) models of interaction between historical studies and other social sciences. The novelty of this approach consists in using the potential of the sociology of knowledge to analyze the historical epistemology and consistently study the relationship between history and various forms of knowledge of the past.” p. 1.
HISTORY AMONG OTHER SOCIAL SCIENCES
Irina SAVELYEVA, Andrei POLETAYEV
In recent decades the relationship between history and the social sciences has been the subject of many works devoted to “historiographic turns” (1). So, drawing on the studies into “turning points in historiography”, including Russian historiography (2) we would like to submit some more general observations on the mode of the existence of the historical discipline among other social and humanitarian sciences, and the models of interdisciplinary interaction.
To understand modern history (historical knowledge) (3) one has to address three interconnected themes:
1) the character of the differences between history and other social sciences;
2) the degree to which history is a science, i.e. its similarity to other social sciences;
3) models of interaction between historical studies and other social sciences. The novelty of this approach consists in using the potential of the sociology of knowledge to analyze the historical epistemology and consistently study the relationship between history and various forms of knowledge of the past.
I.M. Savelyeva, Dr. Sc. (History), Director, Humanitarian Historical-Theoretical Studies Institute, Higher School of Econmics (GU-VShE); A.V. Poletayev, Dr. Sc. (Economics), Professor, Deputy Director, Humanitarian Historical-Theoretical Studies Institute GU-VShE). The article was first published in Russian in the journal Novaya i noveishaya istoria, 2007, No.6.
History as knowledge of the past
An overwhelming majority of modern historians perceive history as a science about past social realities, but they do pursue that thought to its logical conclusion but rather take it as a given. In reality, the adoption of that thesis requires an answer to several questions.
First, why has knowledge of the past been isolated as an independent area only in the study of society?
Secondly, if history is knowledge of the past how are the other social sciences to be defined in terms of the temporal parameter? Are they sciences only of the present and if so where is the boundary between the past and the present in social science and how is it determined? (4)
Social sciences have not always been separated in terms of the temporal parameter. At the initial stage of specialization of social knowledge major works on historical sociology were not exceptions as they are now. The reason was not only that sociology was living through a phase of self-determination and had not yet made its final choice, but also some characteristic misconceptions of the 19th century regarding the possibility of discovering universal or “natural” laws that fit “all times” (the Positivist paradigm of social studies originating from Auguste Comte and the evolutionary approach geared to the analysis of social dynamics).
The subsequent renunciation of the natural science approach to sociology, economics and other social disciplines led to a waning of interest in the problems of the past. Having worked out an independent apparatus of categories and theories, renounced the once fashionable “historical” approach and espoused the methods of structural-functional analysis the social sciences have in a way cut themselves off from the past (5). As the American historian Lawrence Stone rightly noted a quarter of a century ago, no group among social scientists is seriously interested in facts or interpretations of the changes if they occurred in the past (6).
Obviously, that statement holds only for the study of the distant past. If one thinks about it, the bulk of the information about social reality that social sciences use refers to the past in one way or another. A newspaper of today speaks about the events of yesterday, i.e. about the past, although readers perceive fresh newspaper information as a story of the present.
Let us cite an example from the realm of economics. A stock broker who has up-to-the- minute information about changes of currency rates, interest rates and share prices, etc. would be extremely surprised if told that he is studying the past, although that is essentially what he is doing. In that sense he is in no way different from an economic historian studying the plunge of share prices during the Great Depression. In both cases the events have already happened, they already belong to the past, the question being how remote a past. In other words, qualitatively information on share prices of 70 years ago and today is the same in that it is information about the past and not about the present.
What makes a historian different from a stock broker is not what kind of information he analyzes but the purpose for which he does it and what actions he performs on the basis of the analysis of the information about the past (one writes an article and the other buys some securities).
An equally revealing example can be drawn from politics. Any political leader is mindful of recent events and the actions of other political agents, but great politicians take into account the events of far more remote past and the experience of the great historical figures of past eras: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Napoleon, Frederick the Great, Caesar. Suffice it to recall Machiavelli’s book “The Prince” which was written with an eye to the present and the future, but is permeated with the past.
Let it be noted, however, that there is no historical past in Machiavelli’s work. The word is probably key for understanding exactly what “past” and “present” mean when separating history from the social sciences. The distinction lies in the perception of the historical past as something other. That determines the boundary between the present and the past: the present, i.e. the subject of specialized social sciences, includes only that part of the past when society was not essentially nodifferent from the present and can therefore be studied according to the same schemes, models, theories and concepts that have been developed for the analysis of the present. To be sure, that boundary is tenuous and vague; in certain disciplines the boundary between the past and the present may vary even within each of them. But the overall principle of distinction “in terms of time” remains unchanged.
This brings us to the answer to the question why only one type of knowledge – scientific knowledge of social reality – puts knowledge of the past in a special compartment. From the point of view of the “subject matter” it is clear that of the three types of realities – divine, natural and social – only the latter is perceived as subject to substantial (rapid, qualitative) changes. The divine reality is often assumed to be unchangeable. If any changes in it are admitted, the periods of the past that qualitatively differ from the present (for example the era before Christ in Christianity) usually command far less attention than the present and the future. In the world of non-living nature change is assumed to be either very slow or not qualitative, and the analysis of the past states of an object of study by this or that science no longer calls for specialized disciplines and is carried out in the framework of astronomy, geology, etc. For the living nature, where the rate of change is higher, that problem is much more pronounced, which accounts for the emergence of such departments of biology as paleozoology and paleobotany.
From the point of view of method it is likewise clear why specialization “in terms of time” arises in the study of social reality. Other types of knowledge – philosophy, morals, the arts, ideology, etc. – even though they construct not only the present, but also the past and future social reality, do so mainly with the help of categories that are outside time (Being, Good, Beauty, Utility, Power, etc). In social sciences there is no “theory in general”, theory not associated with time and social space. Even the most formal of economic models proceed from a certain reality characteristic of a certain time and of certain countries.
That is the reason why we cannot go along with the widely held view that the historian merely transposes into the past the problems which are studied by other social sciences with regard to present-day society. Theories of social life are applicable only to a certain historical period and reflect only that period.
The span over which most modern economic, sociological and political concepts are relevant and applicable does not exceed 100-150 years (and often much less). Everything beyond that period calls for a different theoretical and categorial apparatus. Beyond a certain point in the theoretical analysis of past reality other schemes, models and concepts need to be developed. Thus, historical knowledge is not one science, but a system of sciences, or even a set of systems each corresponding to a certain type of society that existed in the past. Ideally, for example, the analysis of the Enlightenment calls for its own sociology, economic science and political science, etc. To put it another way: there needs to be a sociology of the era of Enlightenment, Renaissance, the late Middle Ages, the early Middle Ages, etc (7). However, present-day society is clearly not inclined to pay for the work of the required number of specialists dealing with such abstract matters. Human resources involved in this enterprise are extremely limited which accounts for the studies carried out by historians not being “theoretical” enough and for the paucity of studies of past social reality made by social scientists.
The proposed concept can be applied only to the present-day scientific episteme which contains a number of established social disciplines that meet the standards of scientific knowledge. The methods used and developed (or that have to be developed and used) by historical science to study its subject matter reflect (or must reflect) the state of the social knowledge at a given point in time. But we believe that the introduction of a third “classification axis” (time) helps to determine the place of history in the modern system of knowledge more precisely.
The fact that history studies the past does not mean that it is unconnected with the present (8). At any point in time historical knowledge is tied to the present, is dictated by the present and in many ways determined by the present. In that sense the construction of past reality as embodied in present-day historical knowledge is inevitably linked with the construction of the present as represented in the social sciences.
History as scientific knowledge
The difference between history and the social sciences according to the temporal criterion does not imply differences of research methods. Our next thesis is that both empirical and theoretical foundations of history, in terms of present-day science of science, do not differ from other social sciences in any fundamental way.
The key issue of historical theory is how to study a vanished object, i.e. an object that existed in the past. Because the object of study in history is, as a rule, impossible to observe or reproduce experimentally the problem of “reality of the past” often crops up in discussions as to whether history is a science. But the arguments are somewhat contrived: all social scientists work with observations referring to the past and they don’t seem to be particularly worried about its reality. In astrophysics it should be an even more acute problem as the picture of the starry skies that we observe reflects the past state which is very remote in time from the present. Moreover, that picture has a complex temporal structure because its various elements (observed stars) belong to different periods of time depending on their distance from the earth (or rather, from the observer). Astrophysicists in fact study a past so remote that historians and archeologists cannot even imagine it, yet they are not worried about the problem of the reality of that past. They work with information (signals) about objects and the reality of these signals is not questioned.
Modern sociology of knowledge equates the reality status of the past and the present. “The historical Spirit believes in the reality of the past and assumes that the past as a form of being and to some extent as content is inherently no different from the present. By perceiving what no longer exists as the past he recognizes that what happened (in the past) existed at a certain time and place just like what we see today exists: it means, among other things, that the treatment of what happened (in the past) as imagined and unreal is absolutely untenable and that the absence of the past (or future) should on no account be regarded as irreality”, wrote Francois Chatelet (9).
The feature of social reality that makes it fundamentally different from natural reality is that a significant number of the objects of study are limited to interaction between a restricted number of subjects. Social reality as the product of human activity is based on acts of thought, but they do not lend themselves to direct observation. So, human actions (social and cultural) are identified as the prime objects in the study of social reality. But they are localized in time and space and involve a limited number of subjects. These actions are between subjects only at the time they happen and because they are local they can only be observed by a limited number of people. Any concrete action is a one-off event and it cannot be reproduced as an object for repeated observations. Therefore in social sciences, when it comes to the study of human actions, only the data of observations and not the objects of observations are intersubjective. In general, to analyze a society, you do not necessarily have to observe it.
Indeed, in the social sciences only the results or products of cultural actions meet the intersubjectivity test. The intersubjective character is inherent in the physical form and the symbolic content of the objects. Strictly speaking, only material objects and the messages they carry in a semiotic form have a stable intersubjective character (that is preserved over time).
The thesis that historical knowledge differs from other social sciences in that historians cannot observe the object of study is essentially correct. But an overwhelming majority of social scientists, too, do not observe their object directly, as distinct from natural scientists who devote much time to observation. Social scientists deal with data (reports) on an object and in that sense are not much different from historians. Of course, there are exceptions. Such disciplines, for example, as cultural anthropology, and to a large extent psychology and to some extent linguistics (the study of living natural languages) do make extensive use of direct observations. But the majority of social and humanitarian disciplines – economics, sociology, political science, international relations and law – have scholars dealing with reports (data, texts, etc).
This may partly explain the increased interest in the analysis of texts in the second half of the 20th century. To some extent it reflects a desire to make social and humanitarian studies more rather than less “scientific”. The requirement of intersubjectivity of the empirical material which is an indispensable condition for objectivization of scientific knowledge (its recognition as knowledge or a true statement about reality) naturally puts texts to the fore. As Georges Duby notes, “historians have developed a desire to see a document, testimony, i.e. a text, as having scientific value in its own right… They are aware that the document is the only reality accessible to them” (10).
Another argument seeking to prove that the empirical base of history differs from that of other social sciences is the absence, in historical studies, of feedback between theory and empirical data. If the theoretical component of scientific knowledge in the broadest sense implies asking questions and seeking answers to them, one can say that to answer new questions the researcher needs new information. It can be generated by new data (information) and by using the existing data in a new way.
In the 20th century the science of history has demonstrated the colossal potential for the development of both (i.e. bringing in new data (reports) or “sources,” in historical parlance, and teasing out totally new information from the sources previously used). Of course, there are some limitations: a historian cannot conduct a sociological poll, survey a concrete enterprise or subject an individual to a psychological test. But it has to be noted (and I think every social scientist would agree) that the fact that specialists in “current reality” can potentially obtain entirely new data is often impossible to realize.