History: an art or a science?

answers1: try jstor for articles to either support or negate your argument
answers2: Both an art and Science because in history there is an art
through imaginative work by the ancient people and at the same time it
is a science because if you study history there is an systematic
chronoligical records of past events
answers3: It si not an art because art is practical. Art shows us the
way of how to go about doing a thing practically. History is not
practical in its totality. thats important- in its totality. <br>
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It is not science because science is the observation and analytical.
history is neither. it is not ananlytical. But history can be studied
scientifically though the subkect as such cannot be called science.
Science has some generally applicable rules, history has none. The
rules of science are derived after observation and experimantation.
That doesnt happen in history. <br>
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History is a social-science. It deals with past societies and tries to
analyse the previous actions and deeds. though it forms no laws and
rules. <br>
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TW K
answers4: It should be neither !
answers5: In my view it is an art and a science. <br>
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1. It falls into the Arts and Humanities curricula at university <br>
2. It is nearly always subjective - ie. two different historians can
come up with different interpretations using the same source material.
Science is mostly objective (don't lets stray into quantum mechanics
here though, as that will destroy my theory!) <br>
3. It is based on factual records and properly controlled research.
answers6: Good history is in the details, many details, accumulated by
focused study, often years of study - details tied together in
to-the-point clarity. Good history is not produced by mere
imagination, devotions and poetic utterances - no matter how artistic.
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If history were just art, a writer could spin his work unfettered by
concern for what really happened outside his own imagination. He could
communicate myth with abandon as did storytellers during the Stone Age
and later, and as did those priest-scribes who made of the past
whatever advanced the worship for their particular god. If Osama bin
Laden were to write history he would do it as an art. <br>
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Historians have archaeology to draw from. They have primary documents
that tell them what people were declaring. They cannot verify the way
scientists can, but they can be empirical, which is a part of science.
If I write that the Avesta describes Zoroaster as God's prophet, I am
being empirical. If I write that Zoroaster was God's prophet, I am
being artful. Or, if I write that Custer's wife said that he beat her
and there is no recorded evidence of this, I am also being artful.
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The evidence on which some history is based is not good enough that
history can be called a science in the same sense that biology is a
science. But good history is more than just an art, and it tries to be
as scientific as possible. Good history tries to describe what
happened, with the kind of detail that creates an honest,
dispassionate and accurate, although imperfect picture. It is not a
tract for a political or religious point-of-view. It gets as close to
the impartiality of science and to the devotion to detail of science
that it can.