History as social science? The epistemological debate and the comparative method

In the wake of the crisis of the Annales’ School, and the epistemological revolution it promoted, a debate about the validity of methodology was sparked. Themselves critics of the hermeneutical study of texts, the purveyors of the Nouvelle Histoire came under heavy fire. The accuracy of the almost-manifest materialistic- structure oriented history was challenged on multiple levels. Aside from its impersonal stance, many historians wondered aloud if the sheer amount of data presented in works such as Braudel’s Mediteranean actually yielded valid responses toward the explanation of the societal mechanism as a whole. The linguistic turn’s historiographical facet grew out of the conviction that langue and parole were the true elements of study(1) , through which the omitted mental element could be gauged. But the entry of linguistic and literary method into the historical discipline eventually produced a methodological implosion, with the effects of which history and other social sciences find themselves still in a continuous negotiation(2) . It is the purpose of this essay to situate the comparative method within this methodological squabble, and to display its feasibility versus the discursive challenge.
The dispute over the scientific nature of social sciences, in a broader context, and history, in particular, originates in the taxonomy of sciences put forward by positivism in the 19th century. Auguste Comte divided the scholarly field into two major categories, nomothetic and ideographic(3) . The conviction that social science belonged to the former was cardinal. The idea that forces and agents which determined social evolution could be scientifically circumscribed was considered to be axiomatic. I have identified three main by-products of this system of thought influential in the domain of history: Marxism, cliometry and the Annales(4) . The reason for the inclusion of these three differing modes of investigation into one category does not imply that they are methodologically or conceptually identical. They however, for the purposes of this study, can be lumped together due to the fact that they share a common belief in the causal mechanism of history.
This Weltanschauung became predominant in historiography with the advent of the journal Annales. The historians gathered around this periodical championed an inter-disciplinary, multi-leveled, semi-materialistic approach to scholarly research of the past. This methodology reached its apogee in the magnum opus of Fernand Braudel entitled Civilization Materielle, Economie et Capitalisme. The author identified a multitude of variables, engaged in a complex relational scheme with one another, that determined the configuration of the large structures which governed the physiognomy of society at a given time(5) . The ecological, social and economic base was more important than changes in the superstructure ( politics, ideology, art). Another, rather extreme derivative of the materialist conception toward historical investigation was to be found in the USA, in the form of cliometry. Mathematical formulae and computerized analysis almost completely substituted traditional historical narrative. The results reached a level of abstraction so high as to be incomprehensible to a lay reader. The Marxist stream of thought also had a foothold in sociology, and insisted upon its own dogma of social transformation, the description of which in the pages of this essay would be superfluous exercise. The three interpretative avenues advocated a system of determinant variables in the equation of social progression ( the Annales third generation is perhaps the exception) that gave human agency an insignificant role. Their investigation was oriented toward structures in a rationalist manner. Methodologically, they oriented their demarche toward hard sciences. Emanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s declaration “by 1980, the historian must be a programmer, or be nothing(6) ” is emblematic for this stream of thought.
The relative failure of “scientific” history in the mid-1960’s gave birth to a new methodological understanding. Intellectual historians John Pocock and Quentin Skinner introduced language as the object of study, and brought, alongside late-Annales contributor, Le Roy Ladurie, the history of ideas back to the forefront. The concepts of mentalité, political language and speech act were central to the argument that history was essentially a science that studied texts. Therefore, the determination of the particulars of the language and the meanings of concepts in that particular language became pivotal(7) . The German Begriffsgeschichte school, through the work of Reinhart Koselleck and Otto Brunner even engaged in concerted efforts to provide historians with the methodological tools of investigation, in the form of great conceptual dictionaries. However, history’s linguistic turn was a step toward the adoption of the methodology of literary criticism, and only a step away from the claim that history was a pseudo-science. For intellectual and conceptual historians, the text is the focus of study. For the methodological deconstructivists that followed, text was not only the only object of study, but also the product.
Among the most notable and fervent representatives of historical deconstructivism were Michel Foucault and Hayden White. Their contention was that there cannot be a set methodology or axioms, upon which the methodology of social studies is grounded. All present viewpoints toward the past are ideologically and culturally biased, and therefore a general “scientific” standard cannot be maintained. All nomothetic statements are impossible(8) . Foucault’s concept of discourse of power equates history to an intellectual construction. Hayden White proposed an alternative “methodology”, borrowed from literary critic Northrop Frye, sociologist Karl Mannheim and others. For him, history is a combination of aesthethic, moral, ideological and scientific demarches, a “poetic exercise” in the end(9) . All histories are a reflection of varying philosophies of history and should be treated in accordance. The American historian distinguishes between three levels of construction of a historical work: mode of emplotment, mode of argument and mode of implication ( Liberal, Conservative, Radical, and Anarchist )(10) . He supplemented this taxonomy with his “theory of Linguistic Tropes” (Methapor, Metonymy, Synecdoche and Irony)(11) . This theorizing all leads toward the obvious conclusion that history is a-scientific, situated in the proximity of literature rather than physics or biology. White goes on to argue that in science there is an overall agreement between the members of the scientific community about what posits a scientific question; in the historical discipline, exists a lack thereof(12) . Furthermore, history and social science in general has no solid axioms to ground its research. The criteria of truth and “historical knowledge” is also in continuous flux(13) . In conclusion, it should come as no surprise that social science has given no satisfactory answer to the questions concerning causality of various events and phenomena.
The result of the challenge of methodology put forward by the post-structuralist and post-modern worldview was an almost utter methodological implosion. Instead of a central, conductive line of scientific understanding, a multitude of competing voices emerged. The deconstructivist legacy in the historical discipline endowed its practitioners with a feeling of self-assumed subjectivity. Two, conceptually similar means of eschewing the inherited lack of objectivity, can be identified. The first was a growing congruence of history and anthropology. Here, Clifford Geertz’s method of “thick description”( the accurate and detailed rendition of cultural and other practices), gained important support(14) . The second was an essentially revisionist response given to the post-modern challenge. Its main exponents are Lawrence Stone and Peter Burke. The “revival of the narrative”, as it has become known ( after the title of Stone’s article, which has become a manifesto of sorts for the movement), readily acknowledged the historians’ implication and interaction with the subject-matter(15) . Instead, it insisted on the rhetorical quality of the historical product and celebrated history as a craft rather than a pure science. In this way, the discipline reverted to what it had been in the days of Livy, or in more recent times, Michelet or Trevelyan.
From the brief overview of the historiographical transmutations presented above, one can observe the extreme oscillation of the conception behind the discipline, from a purist, rationalist toward a relativist argumentation. The debate gravitated around the possibility of reality beyond a subjective viewpoint. The question of the existence of objectivity and truth, if subjected to an extreme reductionist argument such as Hayden White’s, yields, of course, only one possible answer: a negative one. The antagonism stems from the rigidity of Comte’s initial classification. Social science, in this logic, cannot bridge the divide between nomothetism and ideography, being forced to belong to one camp or the other. The number of variables that have to be quantified in order to reach an equation is innumerous, and post-modernists claim, the “human variable” is unquantifiable, due to the lack of a proverbial Archimedean point. But the criticism against this interpretational scheme has been also heavy from the die-hard followers of “scientific” history. The main accusations are the extreme reductionism and nihilistic qualities of this stream of thought, not to mention its innate tendency to reify language and discursive practice.
The answer probably lies in adoption of new methodology, that transcends the traditional layout of sciences. The comparative method, as presented by Przeworski(16) , may yield a possible solution to the crisis. Its main quality is its adaptability to the problem at hand, out of which it seeks to decant nomothetic ( or causal) statements. At its core it is a reevaluation of the validity of theoretical models and the value of nomothetic statements within social sciences. This methodology avoids the pitfall of other interpretational avenues, by employing hypotheses instead of relying on a priori laws. In this way, it does not force its theory upon the actual findings. The comparative method is continuously used to test and re-test the cogency of hypotheses, which in turn are transfigured by the results of comparison. The result is the generation of a temporal nomothetism. This system itself replaces the axiom as the groundwork for the science as such. The postmodern criticism targeted the weak point of previous social theory by pointing out its inherent lack of an axiomatic core. This logic of argument is based upon the presupposition of the axiomatic nature of “hard” sciences. However, there are numerous examples from varying disciplines of the “nomothetic” category, that had their base-assumptions called into question from time to time. Therefore, at their core also lies a mechanism as described above.
Other criticism, such as cultural bias can be bypassed, by “international research”, or area studies done by local specialists, Ossowski(17) claims. The overt generalization of the findings can be circumvented by an adoption of concepts to specific cases. In this manner, the reification of concepts can also be avoided, to a certain degree(18) . By treating social phenomena as components of certain systems, the comparative method is highly contextual, making it an adaptive tool for both social scientists and historians.
The merits of comparison espoused above however, should not be over-emphasized. The comparative method is not, and does not claim to be, a panacea. The reality of subjectivism must be self-assumed by any historian. Nevertheless, this method points toward a possible loophole, to the road that takes social science away from the methodological implosion brought by post-structuralism, owing to its flexibility and suppleness.

Notes:
1.Ian Hampshier-Monk, History of concepts: comparative perspectives, Amterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 1998, p. 40-41
2.Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century, Hanover, NH : Wesleyan University Press, 1997, p. 118 and Alan Munslow, The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies, London ; New York : Routledge, 2000, p.8-9
3.Ferdinand Fellmann, History of Philosophy in the 19th century, p. 21-22
4.Lawrence Stone, The Revival of Narrative, in The Past and the Present Revisited, London : Routledge, 1987, pp. 76-78
5.Peter Burke, History and Social Theory, Cambridge, UK : Polity Press, 1992, pp. 151-153
6.Stone, The Revival…, p. 85
7.Hampshier-Monk, History of concepts…, p. 39
8.Iggers, Historiography…, p. 119 and Arthur Marwick, The New Nature of History, Houndmills, Basingstoke : Palgrave, 2001, p. 12
9.White, Metahistory, p. X. ( Preface)
10.White, Metahistory, p. 29
11.White, Metahistory, pp. 31-38
12.Hayden White, Metahistory, Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, p. 12-13
13.Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century, Hanover, NH : Wesleyan University Press, 1997, p. 118
14.Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Cambridge, England : Polity Press, 1992, p. 240-241
15.Stone, The Revival of Narrative, and Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Cambridge, England : Polity Press, 1992, p. 234-235
16.Przeworski, Adam and Henry Teune. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, Malabar, Fla. : R.E. Krieger, 1982, pp. 3-13
17.Przeworski, Adam and Henry Teune. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, Malabar, Fla. : R.E. Krieger, 1982, pp. 9
18.Przeworski, Adam and Henry Teune. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, Malabar, Fla. : R.E. Krieger, 1982, p. 10-11

Bibliography:

1. Burke, Peter, History and Social Theory, Cambridge, UK : Polity Press, 1992
2. Burke, Peter, New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Cambridge, England : Polity Press, 1992
3. Fellmann, Ferdinand, History of Philosophy in the 19th century,
4. Hampshier-Monk, Ian, History of concepts: comparative perspectives, Amterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 1998
5. Iggers, Georg, Historiography in the Twentieth Century, Hanover, NH : Wesleyan University Press, 1997
6. Marwick,Arthur, The New Nature of History, Houndmills, Basingstoke : Palgrave, 2001
7. Munslow, Alan, The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies, London ; New York : Routledge, 2000
8. Przeworski, Adam and Henry Teune, The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, Malabar, Fla. : R.E. Krieger, 1982
9. Stone, Lawrence, The Revival of Narrative, in The Past and the Present Revisited, London : Routledge, 1987
10. White, Hayden, Metahistory, Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993