| > I sympathize with you that it's probably true that scientists are inclined to cargo-cult their science after physics. But the endeavor here is not wrong, so even if it's cargo-cult, it's good. Having been trained as a physicist and then worked as a biologist and dabbled in history, it isn't good. Physics cannot be used as the ideal of sciences because it is an extremely strange science. Consider: physics deal with simple systems with only a few essential observables that can be repeatably measured. History deals with very complicated systems with an inordinate number of possible observables none of which can be repeatably measured. Why would you expect them to resemble each other? I actually wrote a book about this... > Science's primary objective is to find models. A model should do predictions, and then scientist should collect data of interest, and make sure the data isn't falsified by the model's predictions. Any scientist who cannot do predictions, and verify that data doesn't contradict predictions, is no scientist at all. A model is supposed to recapitulate observations. Prediction is only relevant in the case of repeatable observations or the discovery of new observables. Astrophysics and history don't get the former, but you will find prediction in both in the latter case...but once you've measured it, it's not prediction anymore. > Once you have models, it's simply too tempting to formalize them and build mathematical theories for them. People do this to a limited extent with toy models, but the relationships among observables in history that you can get from the historical record tend to be fairly simple and rough, while the number of observables is enormous, so formal modelling doesn't buy you much. When people have done this on a large scale, you get the Club of Rome...trying to peer a few decades into the future with an enormously complicated model. > It's another, and totally reasonable thing, to build a theory X from first principles that correctly predicts some data. First principles are overrated, and I think the training of physicists overemphasizes them. In condensed matter there's a phrase, "more is different." We can go from atomic descriptions to macroscopic ones...in very, very simple cases. History has no such simple cases. You always have a huge number of parameters, which leads you back to the old adage that with three parameters you can draw an elephant, and with four you can make him wag his tail. There's too much slop for a model from first principles predicting things in history to be interesting. |