Now, to start the process of comparing the historical and scientific method, I was intrigued by @Rumraket’s comment in another thread. I’m not interested in engaging the topic of that thread, but I found his comment interesting:
Two differences between the use of eyewitness accounts in history and natural science:
- In science, we usually don’t speculate about the credibility of the human sources - their motives, cultural or political biases. Instead, we just assume that they are truthfully reporting what they thought or remembered they saw on the display of their multimeter, for example.
- In science, eyewitness accounts are generally repeatable and can analyzed using statistics, whereas in history, often each piece of evidence is unique and analyzed on a case-by-case basis.