Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2010 7:36 pm Post subject: 12/2 History and Science
Please Post:
Are the philosophies and methodologies of science and history changing in ways that are compatible? Are they pushing against each other? Do they have any relationship at all?
I think our philosophies on science and history in the reading differ, but they are building off each other. For example, to Hegel “History [is] …the physical realization of the spirit of all men…he is suggesting that man is his history”(p.64). Marx thought “The goal of history was thus the liberation of humanity” (p.76). To me those two definitions build off each other. Hegel states that history defines man and is the spirit of man. Marx then goes even further stating it is not only man itself but also the freedom of man. In addition, patterns keep coming up in the readings. Marx structured a pattern of society into three parts, Turner saw the pattern of western expansion, Kant recognized a priori, Darwin saw the process of Natural selection. Although these are all different theories they recognize the importance of not just isolating one event but looking at the cause and effect and precedent. Many our readings have also discussed progress as a part of history. Hegel’s dialectic demonstrated history as constantly getting higher and more complex. In Darwin’s theories of Natural selection species are constantly adapting and moving toward perfection.
Definitions of science for me have been less clear in these readings, but I think they both build and compliment each other as well as going against. Galileo though science was all about observation and experimentation, but Aristotle didn’t believe his theories could or should be tested. In addition Galileo thought science created a divide between man and nature although according to Kant “Man and nature are profoundly in accord”(p.61). As far as similarities, Kant, Darwin, and Galileo all recognized that science can alarm and upset authority and the public.
I’m pretty unsure about the science part so I’d love to hear what you guys think about that.
In addition, patterns keep coming up in the readings. Marx structured a pattern of society into three parts, Turner saw the pattern of western expansion, Kant recognized a priori, Darwin saw the process of Natural selection. Although these are all different theories they recognize the importance of not just isolating one event but looking at the cause and effect and precedent. Many our readings have also discussed progress as a part of history. Hegel’s dialectic demonstrated history as constantly getting higher and more complex. In Darwin’s theories of Natural selection species are constantly adapting and moving toward perfection.
I like the idea that a "pattern" in our reading has been the concept of causality and how it applies to both disciplines. In science at least, Aristotle believed that causality was the only way in which one could arrive at "true" knowledge. “Natural History… for Aristotle was a means to a higher end—the source of factual data that would lead to physiological understanding and causal explanations. And for him, true knowledge was always causal knowledge.”(12)" And although Hegel may not have been a scientist, his contributions to science revolved heavily around the idea of causality for his Dialectic Method placed causality in the hands of man instead of some higher power or a priori in the universe. The idea that all true knowledge is empirical and that we create with our senses/experience meant that our examination causality meant our perception of both cause and effect was created by our experience. Later with Darwin's work, his theory of natural selection and its connection to time, worked backwards for time, examining effect then cause, and applied causality to variations of species. From his studies and conclusions on variations and the common ancestor, Darwin went as far as to imply that causality progressed/created nature and life. It seems that throughout science, causality has been expanded on to first verifying knowledge to actually explaining our existence and evolution as species.
As I look back on the men we have read about (a list Emily includes quite nicely) I realize that, for all the HISTORIANS, their ideas are simply variations. This is not to say that one man had a root idea and all others deviated, but that within the discipline they all just had different perspectives. What I mean is, when you put the men in chronological order of ideas and respective impact, there doesn't seem to be any PROGRESSION.
I feel as if what inevitably ends up happening is that certain philosophies and specific interpretations of said philosophies rise and fall in popularity over time. All these historians saw history has the big THING that needed some structure and focus if one were to grasp it. For Kant this was a priori, Hegel the dialectic, Marx, a stratification of peoples within social structures, Turner, a constant return to savage and renewal of civility, etc. Then within their structure of choice, (as Emily said:) patterns could be deduced that could reaffirm the initial structure and analysis would follow. Yet it doesnt appear as if methodology and philosophy within History has been EVOLVING--or, improving. Just changing. Yes they conflict at times, making them by definition incompatible, but I still hesitate to really claim they have any relationship beyond co-existing in space and time.
I can't say the same for science. This is so because, as Turner states (and quite rightly I think) "Each age writes the history of the past anew," (83), Science DOES build off itself. In this sense, unlike an archaic philosophy on history that has every right to flourish as the contemporary ones, past science that is presently disproved must be discredited. Newtonian time was true until it wasn't (i.e. the discovery of relativity). Similarly, the shift from Aristotle's sensual science practices to Hegel's insistence that you participate in your surroundings to Darwin's empirical science, seems to build off itself in that the current Western tradition only credits empirical science. While one can still rely on senses initially, science without expirintation and data is less respected than that which has this more tangible support. In this way, the movement of Science is more linear than history because its harder to juggle conflicting scientific truths than it is to debate variant historical ones.
Rachel, I agree with your description of science as linear and cumulative, but I don’t exactly agree that science, at this point, is the only one of the two disciplines that builds off itself. As we mentioned in class, the present is altered by knowing the past. Turner asserts that history is “ever becoming, never completed.” Although it’s true that old methods do not become superfluous in the light of newer methods, these new methods are culmulative and built off the sum of all methods in the past. We could not have studied Marx and Turner without studying Kant and Hegel, and we could not have studied Kant and Hegel without studying Hobbes, Hume, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Aristotle.
At this point, we’re beginning to see how history and science have affected education, language, and perception in the 20th century. The relationship between the two lies is their ability to change our relationship with an objective reality, if there is such a thing. By removing ourselves from our original perspectives by studying classical scientists and historians like Aristotle and Thucydides, we can see now how science and history deeply affect the way we understand reality; in a way, they are specific modes of philosophy that strive to answer the same question that Kant and Hegel did: how is man related to reality? How can we “seem” to understand everything around us?
I very confused and torn over the distinctions between science and history, as they both now seem to actively involve the knower. As is obvious from others’ answers (including my own), it’s easier to see the similarities between history and science than the differences. I’m curious what others have to say about that…
We ended class today discussing in what ways both Turner and Marx where influenced by both Hegel and Kant, (good thing they were because because if they hadn’t been, pretty much 100% of our papers would have been pointless!!) But, I think Keaton brought up a really important point about “selective use”…
(wait this two post thing is extremely confusing. I just read the other one, and we’re talking about similar things with a different vocabulary)
So…I just changed my mind about what I‘m going to talk about, a consistent question throughout this post tonight is what is the difference between science and history. Maybe this is making it far too simple, but the way I’ve been thinking about it is History is the study of what has already happened. Science is the study of something that has always been.
Meaning history only looks at past events, what we do with that information is different, often it helps us understand our present (just like Turner said!) or speculate about the future (maybe some Marx?!) but it only arrives at those conclusions through events that have already happened
Science on the other hand has always existed. Evolution was discovered by Darwin but it existed before him. Science helps us see patterns in our natural world that we did not create. (although now a days we create all kinds of problems that effect “science” like global warming).
(p.s. i posted on both of these forums...hope that wasn't too confusing!!)
I absolutely think that Science and History are changing in ways that are compatible. Science and history both study change over time, specific interactions between people and nature, and both attempt to draw conclusions based on particular patterns. Further, both disciplines are dynamic, and people are always changing their interpretations of concepts. In any case, Science and History are only as good as the people who study them, and only as truthful as facts, observations, and experiences can prove them to be. Both History and Science recognize the existence of certain underlying conditions, whether they call them a priori's or not. Finally, both depend heavily upon causality, and both have to do with behavior-whether that of an object or a society. Both history and science seek progress, and use previous knowledge to deduce other ideas.
Also, I am inclined to see science and history as something of a continuum. There's definitely a gray area that blurs the end of history and the beginning of science, and I think that the most important difference between Science and History is in how we apply them. Science justifies patterns in objects, and history justifies patterns in people. Thus, something that justifies both people and objects might be somewhere in between. Since nature has, as Ziz said, always existed, I lump nature in with objects.
The dominent philosophies and methodologies of both science and history have changed through the modern era, but they have been mostly compatable, they have changed together over the last two centuries.
Kant sought to find a basic order in the natural world. He said that mankind must have certain a priori knowledge to make any sense of the world, and thought man’s sense of time and space was a priori knowledge. History must be knowable in a similar way, through a sense of moral imperatives. Hegel pushed Kant’s ideas much further. Both scientific and historical knowledge, and the natural and social worlds they interpreted, were essentially progressive, building up through a dialectic process.
Darwin, Marx, and Turner all developed ideas that stemmed from Hegel, but their ideas were very different. Darwin’s science was a highly progressive natural history. His nature evolved higher, more refined organisms. But Darwin was a materialist. It was the material world, not the intellectual world, that interested him.
Marx began as a Hegelian, but became a thorough materialist and reversed the direction of Hegel’s thought. Where Hegel believed that consciousness created the material world, Marx believed the material world – the material conditions of particular men -- created consciousness.
Turner, too, was a materialist. His frontier thesis placed European immigrants in a new, unfamiliar material setting, which stripped away their former culture, and then forced them to pass through several stages of economic development, which in Europe had taken centuries, in a few decades.
Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2010 10:59 pm Post subject: Science/History
I believe that science and history will always been on a path that is sometimes parallel, and sometimes converging. Science and history share many similar traits and no one can doubt that, both anaylyze patterns, both share a intense passion for the truth, for example. However how the methodologies are executed are indeed changing. As Emily stated, and I agree, Science and history continuosly build off each other and provide new inspiration to each other. Though it has been stated numerous times in our class, I will re-state that the dialectic method Hegel developed for history is most applicable to science. Not to mention Kant's view of man and nature being very relevant to history. I do not think they push against each other, because I consistently see elements of both in each other. History and Science are brothers from other mothers (or philosophical fathers?)
One more thought...History and Science can almost be thought of as differing ways of explaining human consciousness. This connects back to defining reality, and thus understanding ourselves through that reality.
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