Deductive indeterminism - The case for a science of history
I was reading this book the other day: Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life. It’s a very interesting book that deals with the cutting edge of current social and cognitive science: the application of computational modelling in social sciences. I will not talk about the details of this book here (I’ll probably talk about agent-based theories and computational models in other articles). I want to talk about something else in this article. In this book I found a term I had never met before: deductive indeterminism.
This term refers to the inability to deduce by logical means a cause for an observable effect. The book was giving an example of a model of how cities form. The model could start with two possible premises, that people want to aggregate together, or that they want to stay alone. In each of the two cases, the computation resulted in the formation of two big cities. Therefore, no matter the cause the effect was the same. Therefore, we couldn’t deduce the cause. This is what we mean by deductive indeterminism.
The reason I was so glad I found this term, is because this was exactly what I was thinking about history and I couldn’t put it in two words.
The study of history is plagued by the diseases of a posteriori-ness and of deductive indeterminism. The scientific method is based on experimentation. However, in history, experimentation is impossible, since things happen only once. So, what historians do, is write huge volumes of books that contain many vague theories with vague notions and models about the procedures that drive history forward.
Of course, what we mean by the term "history" is a matter unto itself. After all, history can deal with many specific things (and their evolution through time) or with almost everything and anything. It’s actually a profound philosophical matter, since if you think about it for a while, this term carries an immense amount of complexity.
History is, actually, a science of facts. However, what kind of facts should a historian find interest in? If we say historic facts then we have made a fallacy, by basing our theory on a cyclical argument. History deals with historic facts and we call some facts historic, because they are part of the study of history. This is obviously the wrong way of thinking.
Furthermore, the term fact is somewhat ambiguous. After all, how can we be sure that something has really happened and constitutes a fact?
There are clearly many sub-fields of history 
Wikipedia defines history as following
History is the study of the past, particularly the written record and oral traditions passed down from generation to generation verbally. New technology, such as photography, sound recording, and motion pictures now complement the written word in the historical record. History is a field of research producing a continuous narrative and a systematic analysis of past events of importance to the human race.[1] Those who study history as a profession are called historians.
This definition of history is probably good enough. History doesn’t deal with facts, but with records, which we hope to provide accurate descriptions of facts.
Now, that we have dealt with this issue, we must elabore a little bit on the methodology of historical analysis.
The problem with history is that it does not constitute a pure science per se like physics. History constitutes a science according to the roots of the word science, the word scientia (latin for knowledge). However, history lacks the two things.
1) Experimental testing
2) A standard methodology
The second doesn’t constitute a real problem, since many sciences have to deal with this problem (like psychology). The first however, clearly proves the problems that history has to deal with.
Not your average historian…
Therefore, what historians do is to try to combine facts with their theories in order to create a cohesive narration of the events they try to explain. And there’s where the problem lies (along with the incentive for this article).
The narrations that historians provide may seem cohesive, but this does not provide any credibility to their theories. Why is that? The answer is simple: deductive indeterminism. Without the chance to experiment on a certain procedure we can never be sure that a theory is right. Until a theory has been experimentally tested every and any theory is at the same time wrong and right. A posteriori every theory seems valid and invalid at the same time.
Of course, many of you might think, "what is this guy saying?". After all, in our everyday lives, we usually deal with theories about everything (from friends to world scale events) at an intuitional level. The theories that the historians provide clearly seem "intuitive". Therefore, why should we reject them?
The reason is simple (but not intuitive ). Think for a while about non-Euclidean geometries in mathematics and theoritical physics. Do these constructs have anything intuitive in them? No. But scientists accepts them. Why? Because they have been given proof about their validity.
The problem with every social science, is that man, the subject that performs the study, is at the same time the object of the study. Our brain has evolved in a certain way to deal with the social reality that surrounds us. We are not used to deal with the social world in terms of statistics and mathematical models. However, these are the only tools that science has verified as truly valid.
Think for example of psychoanalysis. Many people, when they first learn about it, are convinced by the simplicity of the theory. However, as you delve deeper into psychoanalysis, you see that it gets increasingly complex without any particular reason. Vague notions are intertwined with vaguer theories that seem to go nowhere. The same happens with historical analysis. And the reason is simple. If a theory can’t explain clearly a phenomenon you are forced to increase its level of complexity by adding more definitions and notions in order to make it seem more cohesive. The results are theories that provide no explanation for the phenomenon at study.
Maybe not dude…
A posteriori every theory seems valid and invalid at the same time. So, how could history create valid theories? The constant effort of historians to combine different cultural terms, with not actual definition, from different eras of various civilizations in order to create a model of cause and effect for a certain event is, probably, something doomed to fail. So, where should we look for the answer? The answer lies in experimentation.
However, how can historians experiment with their theories? Can they enter into the time machine and go back in time? Or should they create theories about the future and wait for a hundred years to see what happens?
Well, none of these need to happen. I believe the answer to lie in two seperate schools of thought.
The first one is the reductionist school of thought, where by simplifying social processes at all levels, we can find the basic blocks of social and mental life.
The second one, is the school of computational modelling. As we know, many (or even most) systems in nature are complex and non-linear. Most social systems tend to be complex as well.
Computational Modelling
Therefore, what we truly need is to create a science that is based upon the basic blocks of mental life (which will probably be found in our neurons) and then use this base for the modelling of a society. In that case, we will be able to truly simulate decades, centuries and millenia through a computer.
Of course, can this provide true validity to our theories? Maybe not, but this approach will surely provide a solid and clear foundation upon which we can describe and explain social procedures. Should we be able to find the core of social life, then history will unfold as a complete logical sequence of events with no need to appeal to vague terms and strange theories.
Of course, maybe historical analysis still has some things to offer. After all, in our previous post A different view on economics: maybe all we really need we mentioned how Nouriel Roubini rejected mathematical analysis in economics, and forsaw the credict crunch of 2008 through historical analysis.
Nouriel Roubini
Only time (and science) will tell…
Further Reading:
