Power users and mods just keep repeating: “History is not a science because culture (i.e., god) is all-powerful. We might use evidence but we distrust grand theories.”
I’m getting a Master’s in history and I have no desire to read all that.
Too fucking bad! You’re gonna read it, and you’re gonna like it! Now START READING!
What historical period are you specializing in?
Medieval Europe. Doing my thesis on the crusades but I might abandon that path after years of floundering.
Oof I hate their need to pad word count. So much of that part 1/2 guy’s response could have been omitted. Also the down votes, hoes mad.
i’ve never seen someone so pressed about intersectional theory. the AH people made a misstep in not identifying their practice as such but it’s pretty damn obvious.
they also misidentify why history isn’t science: because it’s literature and interpretation. it is not a science in which evidence cannot compel a conclusion, identifying the constant relitigation of history as a scientific process embarrasses the historian’s writing talent and expects there to be an attainable truth at the end of the process.
We might use evidence but we distrust grand theories
Unless of course it’s anti-sovietism, neoclassialism, some half garbled form of zombie Keynesianism and of course the guiding star; white identitarianism
Then we reecive the blessing of all-mighty culture (i.e. god)
This is a bit outside my experience with academic historians although the ones I run with are of a certain stripe. Then again I am not in a disciplinary feild like history and tend to disregard when my historian friends assert diciplinarity boundaries and norms because it feels like putting on a straight jacket that won’t help me with my work as a grad.
It’s 100% a bourgeois thing to say “this is physics and this is history, and they can’t interact.”
I didn’t read through the thread very thoroughly to get their take but it seems that even if culture was inhibiting to understanding history that an awareness of culture could mitigate this. Are there not theories of culture? I’m sure an anthropologist could help. I don’t see why it’s so damning lol other disciplines have learned to deal with this and the historians that aren’t doing this are certainly able to.
I mean, sociology is a field and ideology is a subject of study, it just so happens that sociology has maybe the strongest Marxist skew (in terms of proportion of adherents) of any academic field, which is a real
moment for these dipshits saying culture is a confounding variable for historical materialism as though it is an uncaused cause (hint: it isn’t)
