Similarities and Differences between Scientific and Historical Explanations Essay

Any phenomenon in this world has a separate explanation. Depending on the type of the phenomenon, this can be either scientific or historical explanation. Over the years, the scholars have wrangled “whether natural scientific and historical explanations must have the same formal characteristics.” (Taylor and Winquist 117) The main similarities between historical and scientific explanations are their striving for objectivity and accessibility of the data to the public, while they differ in past-present relations, the subject of explanation, and reliability of findings.

To begin with, both scientists and historians seek for the most objective explanation. Most of the scholars keep to an idea that scientific explanations aim to give an answer to the question why something did or did not happen. (Cohen 252) The structure of a DNA is a good scientific explanation. The purpose of this explanation is to show why there is a definite pattern in DNA molecules. (Kessler and Morin 21) In their turn, the historians try to give an answer to the question how the phenomenon or event take place. (Otterbein 20) Similarly, when giving a historical explanation to the structure of a DNA, the historians will be in the first place interested in how the scientists came to certain conclusions about definite patterns of the chromosomes.

Secondly, both scientists and historians try to make the results of their discoveries public. When viewed from this perspective, historical and scientific explanations are interrelated because “scientific explanations have their counterparts in the realm of the so-called human or spiritual sciences, such as sociology and history.” (White 12) This interrelation accounts for the publicity of scientific findings because they become public due to historians’ discoveries. For example, the scientists can give a logical explanation for gravitation but it is only through the historians, who will be able to contrast the scientists’ findings, define whether they conform to general laws (Knowles 95), and explain this, that the public will find out the explanation to gravity.

The main difference between historical and scientific explanations lies in the ability of the latter to refer both to the past and the present. Scientists can explore modern phenomena and offer explanations to them, but the historians can provide explanation only to those phenomena which have already taken place. (Wainwright 289) Another difference lies in the fact that historians focus “fundamentally on human actions” (Carretero and Voss 366), while the scientists deal with objects and phenomena. Likewise, historians are interested in definite historical figures and their achievements, whereas the scientists try to explain “a particular event or phenomenon.” (Houser 8)

Lastly, historical explanations are always exact, whereas the scientific ones are generalized. Scientific explanations rest on natural law (Lindberg and Numbers 371), which makes them changeable and unreliable. Of course, historical events can be also viewed from different perspectives, but for each scientific explanation there can be an alternative one, while a historic explanation is irrefutable because there is exact evidence supporting it.

In sum, both scientific and historical explanations strive to be objective and are left to the evaluation of the public. However, their differences lie in historical explanations referring to the past and scientific explanations referring to both past and present. Historians concentrate more on doers of the action, whereas scientists are interested in phenomena. Finally, historical explanations are more reliable, whereas each scientist has his/her own view on the problem.

Works Cited

Carretero, Mario and Voss, James F. Cognitive and Instructional Processes in History and the Social Sciences. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994.

Cohen, Gerald A. Karl Marx’s Theory of History: a Defense. Oxford University Press US, 2000.

Houser, Rick. Counseling and Educational Research: Evaluation and Application. SAGE, 1998.

Kessler, James H. and Morin, Katherine A. Distinguished African American Scientists of the 20th Century. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996.

Knowles, Dudley. Explanation and Its Limits. Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Lindberg, David C. and Numbers, Ronald L. God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science. University of California Press, 1986.

Otterbein, Keith F. How War Began. Texas A&M University Press, 2004.

Taylor, Vistor E. and Winquist, Chrles E. Postmodernism: Critical Concepts. Taylor & Francis, 1998.

Wainwright, William J. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion. Oxford University Press US, 2005.

White, Hayden V. Metahistory: the Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. JHU Press, 1995.