Does history possess the epistemological tools to establish the occurrence of an anomaly in the past that defies current scientific models?

Question

Consider an event X that current scientific models deem impossible. These models are built on the scientific method, which follows specific epistemological principles. History, as a distinct discipline, operates with its own set of epistemological commitments.

Given this difference, can history conclude that event X occurred, even if it contradicts or challenges scientific models developed through the scientific method? In other words, can historical inquiry establish facts about the past that conflict with or pose a significant challenge to prevailing scientific theories? Or is history fundamentally bound to accept and never challenge the limits set by the latest and most robust scientific theories regarding what is possible and what isn't?

Finally, can a person adopt a pluralist epistemology that embraces both historical and scientific methods for building knowledge? If so, how should one navigate situations where the historical method suggests an event may have occurred in the past, while the scientific method deems it implausible based on current models?

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This article about the epistemological differences between science and history may be worth a read:

Epistemological Distinctions Between Science and History:

Abstract:
This article describes epistemological distinctions between science and history. Science investigates models of natural law using repeatable experiments as the ultimate arbiter. In contrast, history investigates past events by considering physical evidence, documentary evidence, and eyewitness testimony. Because questions of natural law are repeatably testable by any audience that exercises due experimental care, models of natural law are inherently more objective and testable with greater certainty than theories of past events.

Answer 1

You ask:

Does history possess the epistemological tools to establish the occurrence of an anomaly in the past that defies current scientific models?

It would depend on what sort of "anomaly" challenges science, as there are anomalies to the scientific worldview, and anomalies within the scientific worldview. If you're talking about a challenge within the framework, then it seems likely that the historian works on the same level with the scientist to sort out any differences in how truths are handled. After all, the sciences themselves often provide different aspects given differences in their own thinking and methodologies. On this view, the historian is a scientist among scientists.

But, the scientific worldview is not the only set of metaphysical presuppositions available to a historiographer. If, as Peter Rankin argues, that history is subtended to validating one's ontological commitment to the supernatural (which is metaphysically acceptable, of course), then it would seem that history would necessarily have to at times be at odds with scientific metaphysics, as methodological naturalism simply lacks the ability to provide a metaphysical accounting for "anomalies" (here read as exceptions to or contradictions of a secular and scientific Weltanschauung). Here, the historian would function more as a metaphysician trying to make sense of the relationship to a presumed actual phenomenon that lies outside the framework of naturalism.

Thus, a historian can function both as a scientist and a philosopher within the framework of historiography because the art of history itself is not a single method any more than art of science is a single method. A physicist and an anthropologist, for instance, both approach scientific thinking in distinct ways, and so too, do Marxist historians, nationalist historians, and religious historians approach history in a nuanced and distinct way. Even within Marxist, Christian, and atheistic thinking, there are different epistemological approaches because subtleties of metaphysical presuppositions.

In fact, to complicate the response to your question, the philosophy of history itself can be contentious. Thus, even two historians with similar worldviews might have a dispute over methods. Consider that E.H. Carr in his What Is History? has distinct views from Elton's The Practice of History. Thus, anyone who provides a pat answer to your question is oversimplifying the interplay between historical method, scientific method, and philosophical method. Therefore, there is no simple way of reconciling differences in historical and scientific thinking, and the process is a complicated process of balancing multiple theories using one's intuitions within the framework of the individual historian's metaphysical presuppositions.

Answer 2

Historical analysis tries to figure out the most plausible explanation for the evidence. So it would have a hard time concluding something that science says is implausible or that contradicts our scientific understanding of how reality works.

That doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible for it to reach such a conclusion, it just has a hefty burden of evidence to meet.

This is especially because history significantly relies on people's accounts of what happened, and we have strong evidence showing that people make stuff up all the time, that memory is malleable and unreliable, that people interpret what happened based on cognitive biases and that they're often just wrong. So that would have a hard time overriding well-established and extensively-tested scientific laws.

Anomalies can be compatible with science

Although science is not above concluding that anomalies happened, such as cooling events and extinction events due to meteors, and the Big Bang is a one-time event.

We concluded that these anomalies happened because that's what the evidence points to, and we don't have a better explanation for the evidence that doesn't entail an anomaly. If the evidence doesn't point to that... then the evidence doesn't point to that, and we probably don't have good reason to accept it.

Science versus history

The firm distinction between science and history may not be all that firm.

Science can investigate, test and model things that happened in the past. Exploring the past is a pretty big part of science.

"History" here is interpreted as the field of history that mostly relates to human history, mostly over the last few thousand years. Science can and does investigate events over that period too, and it can e.g. determine the age or material of some artifact to inform historical explanation.

Although science probably isn't going to have much to say about whether e.g. Thomas Jefferson had a dog, because most of the evidence for that would be testimony, rather than physical evidence that forms part of a broader scientific model (beyond "dogs existed and were pets"). Although science indirectly suggests that Jefferson most likely didn't have a flying unicorn (even if we may not be able to scientifically test directly), because that does not seem to be a thing that exists nor has ever existed, given the available evidence, and it doesn't fit into our model of life on Earth.

Answer 3

History is a science among others. It has its own methods but shares the same naturalistic outlook as any science. Therefore one cannot oppose science and history, because history is science.

In fact it's one of the oldest ones. Many historians of antiquity prefaced their writing by denouncing any recourse to supernatural events (like gods interventions in human affairs). They did so precisely because they were not trying to write mythology but a realistic, naturalistic history of events, and they wanted their readers to understand the difference.1

As a matter of principle, as it was conceived millenaries ago to be a different discourse than mythology, and as currently practiced by modern historians, history is therefore not in the business of confirming miracles. On the contrary, one of its tasks is to demystify the past.

What does that mean in practice? For instance that no modern historian worth his salt can possibly confirm the myth of Genesis about a worldwide flood, in the face of the material impossibility of the Genesis story. The task of the historian is NOT to confirm impossible past events narrated by mythology, but to understand how such a myth may have come about, what initial catastrophy (some natural and necessarily local flood) could have given rise to the myth, what the myth meant / conveyed in the historical context that believed in it, what it may tell us today, etc.

In the case if the Flood, to demystify the past would be to say that the Genesis story has been traced back to Babylon and Summer; that the place is a flood plain lying between the Tigris and Euphrat, roughly where agriculture started and where the first cities in the world were built, in the -3000s; and finally, that it's easy to imagine a local flood there sometime in the 3rd millenary BCE, killing everyone except a guy who was sailing his boat. And that's how the myth came by.

1 This assertion needs nuance. As they created this new discourse, different from mythology that had so far "populated the past", Greek and Roman historians from antiquity took a variety of views re. what we would today describe as myths.

One neat example of what I am talking about is Thucydides. In his work, History of the Peloponnesian War, he explicitly states his intention to provide a factual account of events, free from the influence of the gods or supernatural explanations.

Another example is Polybius, a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. In his Histories, Polybius emphasized the importance of eyewitness accounts and direct evidence, often criticizing other historians for their reliance on myth and divine intervention.

Herodotus, in his work Histories covering the Greco-Persian Wars, often expressed skepticism about the more fantastical elements of the stories he recounted. He did give credence to the myth of the Amazons but recently the origins if this myth have convincingly been traced back to female scythian warriors.

A significant exception to my thesis is the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Unlike some of his contemporaries who avoided supernatural explanations, Josephus often included references to God’s actions, e.g. he interpreted the Roman conquest of Jerusalem as a punishment from God for the sins of the Jewish people.

But then, Josephus claimed that he had a vision from God Himself backing that up... 🤔

Answer 4

I would argue the answer must be "yes, both science and history can come to different conclusions." I'd argue this because we can consider a more recent historical event Y -- the result of a scientific experiment. The fact that the experiment happened with some particular results must be accepted historically in order for that experiment to challenge the current scientific model. Science is built not only upon the assumption that this can happen, but that this must happen regularly for science to move forward. If we cannot come up with new evidence to reject an existing model, the usual treatment of the scientific method simply doesn't function.

And if it can happen for a modern historical event Y, an event X further in the past, clouded by the passage of time, certainly would be open to different interpretations by history and the prevailing scientific models.

Answer 5

I think it's partly a matter of scope. I'd say No, not by itself, but I would add that neither does history contain the tools to establish the occurrence of an event that relies on scientific models, either. In both cases, history must reach outside itself. It must consult disciplines like chemistry, biology, psychology, or sociology, for proper explanations. To me, it seems reasonable to take this a step further; sometimes the natural must reach outside its own scope, to the supernatural, for proper explanation. As long as we don't have an a priori commitment to naturalism, then history ought to be able to consider supernatural explanations as well as scientific ones, depending on where the evidence leads.

I think there's an important distinction between explanation and evidence. When it comes to explanation, science is entirely naturalistic, by definition. It deals with natural, repeatable, testable laws of the physical universe. Thus, it cannot possibly be the right tool to provide an explanation for a supernatural event, by very definition. It would be like trying to crosscut a piece of metal with a rip wood saw, or something like that! It's just not made for it. But who's to say that science is the only explanatory tool in history's toolbox? If the evidence points to a supernatural explanation, shouldn't that be within bounds?

Because when it comes to evidence, disciplines can certainly indicate the presence of events outside their own scope. I'd say this is actually very common. Ripples of water can indicate that something outside the pond recently disturbed it. And just as history can point strongly to an event in the past which requires a scientific explanation, so too can natural evidence in science and history point strongly to an event requiring a supernatural explanation. I personally think that it ultimately boils down to either adopting an a priori commitment to naturalism, or to allowing the door to be opened to the existence of certain explanations which are supernatural.

Answer 6

Science makes historical observations all the time and deals in observations the same as history. The only real difference is methodology.

The main difference is the "eyewitness testimony" and primary sources, which history generally takes more seriously than scientific inquiry.

So, to overturn current scientific understanding you just need any history that is well documented enough, or has enough evidence, that it would hold up to rigorous scientific standards, or, historical evidence that points to things about the modern world that we can test.

Answer 7

From the perspective of science, a loose story told by people to people to people who finally wrote it somewhere has no value.

For one, people who are not explicitly trying to document an event with the right tools (both tangible and intangible) will fail. Either they think they saw something (see the story of the N-rays) or what they saw was described/measured wrong.

There are of course ancient measures that were astonishingly good (Eratosthenes works come to mind) but they were well documented, with a scientific approach (as we would call it today).

The more peculiar the events (miracles for instance), the less sensible the description.

So to answer your question: no.