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Source: Zhihu.
This question has really been debated for a long time in the field of history, and no one can say for sure. Personally, I prefer that history is a hermeneutic (or hermeneutics) rather than a science. However, some textual research methods of studying history are scientific.
We took a course "Introduction to History" in our sophomore year. The textbook we used was "Introduction to History" edited by Wang Xuedian, and published by Peking University Press (everyone is familiar with this name, right! He is Professor Alexander, editor-in-chief of Literature, History and Philosophy magazine, and his book Gu Jiegang and His Disciples is a household name. The boring part of this course lies in pure theorization, which talks about the nature and subject characteristics of history, as well as some historical methods, historical management methods and historical research contents (I have talked a lot! )。
There is a sentence on the cover of this book: "History is not an empirical science that focuses on the material world and pursues universal laws or laws, but an hermeneutic that aims to grasp or lead to people's uncertain spiritual world." Wang Xuedian's point of view is very clear. History is not science, but hermeneutics (or hermeneutics, hermeneutics).
At first, I doubted this sentence. I feel that history has always been very rigorous, and all the data and historical materials are accurate, because this is the "real history". Later, I came into contact with the econometric history of the French yearbook school, and I firmly believe that history is a rigorous and regular science. But after reading some books on historical theory, I think there is no problem with this sentence of Wang Xuedian.
The occurrence of historical events is often random and cannot be predicted by scientific methods. Whether it is the Peloponnesian War, the Punic War, the Huang Chao Uprising or the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement in China, there will be a series of intuitive facts and reasons before the outbreak, but aren't these facts and reasons irregular? Moreover, these events are even less likely to cycle regularly. What is science? Science is a knowledge system that reflects the objective laws of various phenomena in the real world and has the characteristics of observability, hypothesis and verifiability. Although history reflects the real events that happened in the past, it has no regularity, let alone assumptions and logical reasoning. Therefore, history is not science. However, the randomness of history does not prevent us from studying it in a scientific way. For example, econometrics is not so much a science as a method of managing history. Quantitative analysis of historical data by means of mathematics and other natural sciences not only helps to accurately restore the event itself, but also makes the history itself more convincing and interesting.
In addition to history, linguistics, philosophy and other disciplines can not be counted as science, but only as humanities. Therefore, now I feel that there are problems in the classification of some disciplines in China. It is not rigorous to classify history, philosophy and other disciplines as social sciences, and it is also unscientific to divide China's discipline system into natural sciences and social sciences in general. Should add a "humanities" (discipline, not science).
2. What is history? Is it science? The definition of history can be summarized into two kinds in connotation. The broad sense of "historiography" is the unity of "history has two meanings" produced by the synchronous training of "history", including: (1) the objective existence and development process of human society in the past, and (2) the spiritual production practices and products created by historians to describe and explore this objective existence and process and its laws. The narrow sense of historiography does not include the former, especially the latter.
In a narrow sense, historiography is the unity of spiritual production and practice, and what it creates belongs to ideology. As far as its nature is concerned, there are different definitions of "activity", "learning" or "scholarship", "knowledge system", "science", "art", "semi-science and semi-art" and "synthesis" due to the different angles and starting points of historians' investigation.
Before the birth of Marxist historiography, the definition of historiography was generally broad, that is, the definition of historiography and the definition of historiography were often consistent, and few people made a strict conceptual distinction between them. "History" and "history" in English are the same word: history. According to the fourth edition of Oxford Advanced English-Chinese Learning Dictionary, the first meaning of history refers to "history"-the study of past events; The second meaning is "history"-a thing of the past, especially a recognized thing in the overall sense; The third meaning actually comes from the first meaning-a systematic description of past events. So "history" and "history" are its original meanings. In the definition or explanation of history by western historians, what history refers to specifically generally depends on the specific text context.
The process of Chinese and western understanding of historiography is basically the same. The concept of "historiography" in ancient China also developed from the understanding of "history", or it was originally included in "history". According to Mr Qu's research, generally speaking, the meaning of "history" in ancient China has experienced the development process of historians, history books, historical events and historiography. The concept of historiography may have originated from the year when Zhao became king in the Sixteen Countries Period of the Eastern Jin Dynasty-319 (Taixing two years in the Eastern Jin Dynasty). At that time and in the next century and a half, people did not give a clear explanation of its connotation. However, getting rid of the dependence on Confucian classics and becoming a completely independent department in official studies is of great significance to the development of ancient historiography in China. Later, there was the content of compilation and philology; By the time of Ganjia in Qing Dynasty, historiography was endowed with historical narrative skills and historical understanding methods. [2] Generally speaking, in ancient China, the highest level of people's understanding of the concept of historiography was that historiography was specialized and technical knowledge about how to recognize, describe or compile past events. This understanding is similar to the definition of "history is art" by modern western historians. In the history of the development of ancient historiography in China, the "history" as the objective existence of human society in the past and the "historiography" as a kind of special knowledge that people know and describe its activities and results have finally achieved a preliminary separation, which is the result of thousands of years of exploration by ancient historians and one of their greatest achievements in historiography.
It is precisely because "historiography" is born out of the hard shell of "history" that in the eyes of contemporary historians, "history" and "historiography" are two concepts with different connotations and essences, and the answers to what they are belong to different ontological categories. But when people define them, they are like a double-faced monster-they are used interchangeably and intertwined. Just as "Yi" has "one name and three meanings" because of reciting differences, combining training and combining training —— "Yi (Jane) is also changeable and difficult to change" —— "History" always has two meanings because of polysemy, which is still stubbornly maintained in modern times. Therefore, the definition of historiography is not much better than that of the ancients, and it is often impossible to completely divide the duality of Cleo. When they define "what is a historian" or "what is history", they are actually defining "historiography" instead of "history". Sometimes they combine training at the same time, which has two meanings. If we analyze it from the perspective of historical ontology, people will inevitably regard its definition as an ideological definition of the concept of "history", thus drawing the conclusion that its historical view is essentially an idealistic historical view. If we analyze the actual content of their explanation and the overall context of the text, it is not difficult to see that they have defined the connotation of historiography in a narrow sense. For example, Liang Qichao, a master of modern Chinese studies and the initiator of the "new historiography" revolution, wrote at the beginning of his book "China Historical Research Law": "Who is a historian? Describing the continuous activities of human society, checking its total achievements and finding its causal relationship are also a reference for the activities of modern ordinary people. " [4] The "history" here obviously refers to "historiography"; Moreover, the book "China Historical Research Law" is also a question of how to study history, not what history is. Of course, most historians adopt the traditional method of simultaneous training. As Du said: "Generally speaking, the so-called history is nothing more than events that actually happened in the past (in short, the past) or records of events that actually happened in the past (past records)."
3. Is history a science? History is a form of knowledge in which human beings screen and combine their own historical materials. History is the concept of dynamic space in static time. History is an organic combination of history, science, philosophy, humanities and their time and space.
The broad sense of "history" is the unity of "history has two meanings" produced by the simultaneous training of "history". Including: the objective existence and development process of human past society completely independent of human consciousness; Historians describe and explore this objective existence, process and its laws, spiritual production practice and products created by it. The narrow sense of historiography refers to the latter, which is the unity of spiritual production and practice, and what it creates belongs to ideology.
Because of the different angles and starting points of historians' investigation, there are different definitions of "activity", "learning" or "learning", "knowledge system", "science", "art", "semi-science and semi-art" and "synthesis". History majors mainly include China history, world history and archaeology, as well as museums, ethnology and cultural relics.
4. Discussion: Why is history both empirical and explanatory? History that is both empirical and explanatory cannot be science, especially in the sense of natural science, for the above reasons.
But we must emphasize here that when we said in the last section that history can never get rid of the shackles and restrictions of "objectivity" easily, we actually admitted that history must have some characteristics of "science", especially its empirical characteristics. It is in this sense that many people call history "empirical science".
History is inseparable from evidence. Without evidence and materials, there is no history. However, history cannot be limited to and satisfied with evidence. It is historiography that has only evidence and is satisfied with it, but history is not historiography.
"The task of a historian is not only to determine the facts, but also to explain them." (1) Because, "Real historical research must not only stay at the level of textual research and narrative facts, but should rise to meaningful understanding and explanation."
Therefore, historical research can not only rely on textual research, but also rely on speculation. In other words, just as history must have the characteristics of argumentation, history must also have the characteristics of interpretation.