Historical science
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Historical science aims to describe phenomena of the unobservable past and reconstruct their causes.[1]
Whenever science tries to explain a unique historical event or past phenomena, careful testing and repricability are by definition impossible.[2] Instead, historical scientists try to construct a set of hypotheses about the causes and then look for a so-called "smoking gun", a piece of evidence which indicates that one of the hypotheses might be a better explanation than the others.[3][4] Historical scientists commonly use:
- (i) the type of reasoning named abduction,[4]
- (ii) inference to the best explanation and
- (iii) argument from analogy.[5]
References
- ↑ Laudan, R. (1992). "What's so Special about the Past?", in Nitecki, M.H., and Nitecki, D.V.: History and Evolution. SUNY Press. ISBN 0791412113. Retrieved on 7 February 2010.
- ↑ Michael J.Behe (2006). Darwin’s black box, the biochemical challenge to the evolution. P.X Preface. Free press, 242. ISBN 9780743290319.
- ↑ Cleland, C.E. (September 2002). "Methodological and Epistemic Differences between Historical Science and Experimental Science" (PDF). Philosophy of Science 69: 474–496. http://spot.colorado.edu/~cleland/articles/Cleland.PS.Pdf. Retrieved 25.1.2012.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Meyer, Stephen C. (2008). Signature in the Cell. New York: HarperOne, 150–153. ISBN 978-0-06-147279-2. “Gould ... emphasized that historical scientist tested their theories by evaluating their explanatory power.”
- ↑ John C. Lennox (2009). God's undertaker. Has science buried God?. Oxford, England: Lion Hudson, 204. ISBN 978-0-7459-5371-7.