Historical perspective in the sciences

Abstract

The present thesis aims to demonstrate that the distinction between historical and scientific disciplines is indefensible, because a historical perspective is necessary for a scientific understanding of the universe. To reach this aim, I first provide a preliminary account of Popper’s philosophy of science and argue on its basis that laws of nature and other scientific theories are all based on previous knowledge/assumptions and must remain hypothetical, because we can never make all conceivable/necessary observations concerning the universe or parts thereof. Next, I argue that there is no difference between the nature of historical knowledge and socalled ahistorical theoretical knowledge in terms of methodology and logic. To do so, I discuss the general criticisms that history is not testable and that it is only concerned with individual instances, whereas physics, regarded the quintessential ahistorical science, is testable and deals with generalities. Further, I use Şengör’s argument to show that Hume’s problem of induction is symmetrical with respect to time, thus the problem of ‘missing data’ is pertinent for all sciences. Therefore, the dichotomy between historical and ahistorical theoretical disciplines about dealing with particulars and universals is seen to be untenable because it ignores the problem of induction posed by Hume and the incompleteness of our databases. Finally, I suggest that since it is impossible not to entertain an evolutionary perspective of the universe, it is inevitable for all scientists to question whether the alleged ‘permanent’ laws of nature are really immutable or subject to change. That is one reason why scientists have come to consider increasingly more frequently the historical development (in the sense ‘time dependent’) of all entities that they deal with, including the laws of nature, which are nothing more than man-made universal hypotheses (even the assumption of the existence of such laws can have no stronger a claim than just being a hypothesis).