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Old 02-02-12, 04:03 PM   #62
tater
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If social science is a science (I don't consider it one, myself (nor does anyone I know in hard science)), it's only barely there (it's about like the science of proving witchcraft scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

History is not at all a science. Not even a little. You need to be able to understand (and model) the mechanisms for it to be a science.

In geology, for example, you might observe that distance between places have changed, or maybe that Africa and South America look like they fit together. That is "history." Coming up with plate tectonics? That's science.

I love history, but it isn't science---that doesn't mean you don't sometimes use the scientific method, everyone uses that almost every day. Historians or archeologists just use it a little more rigorously.
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