[falcolas]

> 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.

[rayiner]

“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_]

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.

[brownbat]

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

Two Dogmas would be a good place to end up.

[foldr]

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.

[wolfgke]

> 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.

[mcguire]

There are plenty of nutty mathematical or physics theories around.

History is roughly as falsifiable as astronomy or biology.

[wolfgke]

> There are plenty of nutty mathematical or physics theories around.

At least for mathematics I have hardly seen any "nutty mathematical theories" (I am a PhD student in mathematics, but not a physicist, so I cannot say anything about physics here). The reason that I see is that for a math text to be considered as solid, it has to contain good, understandable proofs - which are hard to write by "crackpots". To be more precise: On sceptic's blogs I have of course seen links to papers containing "mathematical crackpottery", but I have hardly ever seen those "in the open countryside".

[mcguire]

If we were physicists, I'd be tempted to mention "normalization" here.

Ask your favorite well-known professor how many proofs of P=NP, the Riemann hypothesis, or whatever they get per week. Sure, they're all Time-Cube level crazy, but most off the wall theories are, too.

[foldr]

But then why do you judge the conspiracy theories to be nutty, if they are on just as firm an epistemological footing as actual history?

[wolfgke]

First: I used your "nutty conspiracy theories" wording.

> But then why do you judge the conspiracy theories to be nutty, if they are on just as firm an epistemological footing as actual history?

But to elaborate on your argument: Because of the dubious epistemological footing indeed "actual history" has not the highest reputation to me. The reason I disregard lots of "nutty conspiracy theories" rather lies in the fact that many "conspiracists" have a tendency to find conspiracies in other topics, too, where falsification is much better possible. Thus I tend to judge by looking at the track record of the respective person.

[foldr]

So, you believe that the moon landings weren't faked solely becuase of the credentials of the people who say that it was faked? You believe that the Holocaust happened solely because Holocaust deniers say crazy things about other topics? That seems really, really, off base.

[fjsolwmv]

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.

[azangru]

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

Could you provide some examples?