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0 pointsfalcolas8y ago0 comments

> But they are not falsifiable.

I disagree. Historians are constantly making predictions of events happening today, based on their knowledge of history. Some are accurate, some are not. They can then take this output, and use it to refine the views of history.

This doesn't even cover how history is written by very unreliable narrators, and historians have to do more than learn the "what" to uncover the "how".

Your argument is also somewhat limited to History, when Philosophy, Psycology, and other liberal arts degrees do not have the same limitations.

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rayiner8y ago

“Falsifiability” is a word with meaning. If you identify a single counter example to a mathematical conjecture, the conjecture is wrong. That is not true for history, philosophy, psychology, or the other liberal arts.

frankling_8y ago

Your statement is obviously false (counter example: analytic philosophy produces conjectures that are black-or-white-falsifiable on the exact same basis as mathematical conjectures). Since you are engaging in epistemology, you may appreciate that the above is also an example of what falsification looks like when it is not formal. I'd suggest reading some Popper.

brownbat8y ago

Seconded. I'd add Wittgenstein and Quine to the list.

Two Dogmas would be a good place to end up.

foldr8y ago

You can certainly counterexemplify philosophical arguments.

It's also weird to suggest that no historical claims are falsifiable. That seems to put real history on a par with nutty conspiracy theories.

wolfgke8y ago

> It's also weird to suggest that no historical claims are falsifiable. That seems to put real history on a par with nutty conspiracy theories.

In my humble opinion the scarceness of falsifiability in history is the reason why it is so easy to create nutty conspiracy theories about history vs, say, mathematics or physics.

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fjsolwmv8y ago

That is not true for psychology, biology, chemistry ,or physics either. They all choose some p-value as a boundary for deciding what is real.

Falsifiable means subject to test. It doesn't mean provabe on the sense of math. Only math is provable like math.

azangru8y ago

> Historians are constantly making predictions of events happening today, based on their knowledge of history

Could you provide some examples?

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