I’m not a historian, but AFAIK, very little of historical reasoning is based on quantitative evidence, simply because not much is available. Most of history seems to be of assessing many written sources, assigning how credible each are based on various criteria (linguistic, literary, cultural, archaeological, etc.), and trying to put together an “objective” picture based on these. Are there commonalities with the natural sciences? Of course. Both historians and natural scientists use logical reasoning. Sometimes historians can turn to science to inform the plausibility of historical explanation. However, unlike scientists, historians don’t reduce empires or societies into a set of mechanisms based on simple, verifiable rules. (A few like Toynbee attempted to do something like that, but most historians today don’t regard those as credible.) This is why to say that history is based on the scientific method is a massive mischaracterization, in my view.
1 Like