|
> The reason we don’t think of history as science but we think of meteorology as science even though both build models based on observation, known regularities and constants, is because the sort of reliable predictions a historian can make are of no use to anybody, while any kind of even moderately accurate weather prediction is extremely useful to everybody. No. This is false. One does not need to produce anything useful to be doing science. You just need a high information, correct, falsifiable, and non-obvious prediction. Meteorology produces these in abundance. For example, suppose you take the two most dominant forces in the vertical and horizontal directions and assumed they are in precise balance. In the vertical direction, these are the pressure gradient force and gravity. Them being in balance implies that there is no vertical wind. In the horizontal direction, these are the pressure gradient force and the coriolis force. Since the horizontal coriolis force is orthogonal and proportional to velocity, this implies that wind speed in the horizontal direction will be orthogonal and proportional to the pressure gradient. With a little algebra, one can derive the constant of proportionality, which depends on the latitude. If you look at a 500mb chart in the mid-latitudes (see e.g. https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/500mb), where the assumptions of this argument hold closely, you will see that this holds with high precision, although not perfectly of course. This is called the geostrophic model. It is useless for predicting the weather, since it is static. However, a person who produces this model clearly knows something about how the atmosphere works that the average person, who can say "the weather in an hour is probably going to be about the same," doesn't. They can make high information predictions (e.g. they can draw what the wind barbs on a 500mb chart will look like given only the lines of constant height [note that on a 500mb chart, you can think of lines of constant height in the same way you would be able to think about lines of constant pressure on a chart taken at a given height]), which can be verified over and over again until you get bored silly. I have never seen any evidence that historians have this sort of model at their disposal. That is, a precise, non-trivial, high information, falsifiable model. I would be convinced that scientific history existed if they could produce any such model. They needn't be useful, just precise, falsifiable, and non-obvious. |
If you were a Martian scientist studying human culture by observation, noting things like people congregating in certain places and marking pieces of paper results in changes in who goes to a building far away would be nothing but trivial. But we already know all of that, so it feels and actually is useless as knowledge.
Also, there are very useful models in history when it comes to use of energy and resources - like Ian Morris's - that very much add something non-obvious, falsifiable and are probably correct. Just not very predictive on any scale under 500 years or so - but then again neither is natural selection.