[ELI5] If Hitler would have won, what were his plans?

JHole04 · 2012-05-26T11:55:37.185043+00:00

Even people who don't think History is science tend to agree that social sciences are.

I think there's a range of opinion on which 'social sciences' were actually sciences, and which are merely grouped that way in some universities. This is back to the 'peanut butter isn't butter' comment, where a word is used with different extensions and precisions of meanings in different contexts, and you're confusing the two.

Any historian who referred to themselves as 'a scientist', and then was asked, 'what kind of science', would be laughed at if they responded 'history!'.

You think "people would laugh at you" is an argument?

It's more of an argument than 'yep, that's not what science is'. It's relevant to the question of what words mean, which is what we're discussing. The fact that you and perhaps a handful of other people think that history is a science is somewhat discounted by the fact that the large majority of people who use those words professionally would disagree.

I would be truly fascinated to see any online documentation of that claim.

"Studying history seems to be unrelated to abstract theoretical problems at first. Many historians see their science as(...)" -back cover of "The construction of the past", textbook to the "Theory of History" course (scientific philosophy course for History).

The back cover of a textbook? Do you realize how ridiculous this makes you look? You do know that back-cover copy is written by assistant editors, not even the authors of the book? This isn't documentation - this is advertising. What documentation would be is a scholar saying "History is a science, a true science, and here's why ..." plus some examples of usage of the terms as explicit reference, not a back-cover blurb of an elementary-school textbook. Hint: someone writing the words "Many historians see their science ..." does not prove, or even imply, that even those historians would consider their field a science. BTW, Amazon does not seem to know about this book. Does it actually exist?

You still haven't provided an account of "the Holocaust as a scientific fact"

Aside from documents, people and buildings there is also proof provided by exact science like cyanide traces in bricks

You really don't know what this conversation is even about, do you? I didn't say "Prove the Holocaust happened." I didn't say "Prove the Holocaust is a fact". I had already agreed that it was a fact. What I said was "prove it is a scientific fact". Which you apparently didn't understand at all. Hint - not all facts are 'scientific facts', and you still haven't even demonstrated that the term 'scientific fact' is a coherent concept at all. Second hint: actual scientists don't use the term 'scientific fact'.

Perhaps if you could explain what it is you think professional historians do

Historians try to find out what happened in the past by collecting data on the subject, interpreting it and asking other historians to review their findings.

Ok, there's the problem. You don't understand what professional historians actually do, either. This is an elementary-school, textbook-writer view of what historians do. Not to mention, even your definition here shows that history isn't a science...

To sum up: there are professional disciplines, like history, that have their own established professional practices and are perfectly respectable -- they just happen not to be sciences. There's a whole field called philosophy of science which has done a lot of work to explain what science is, with the result that science is fairly clearly distinguished from those other fields. The fact that you're so eager to claim history is a science shows a number of things - that you don't understand either history or science very well, and that you perceive the term 'science' to have a certain sort of prestige that you want to attach to history as well. If you actually understood the professional practice of history, you'd realize that it doesn't need this help to achieve its prestige!

explainthestufff · 6 days

right; my point was just that dead human cells aren't piling up everywhere .... everything organic gets endlessly recycled.

acurrie · 7 days

duplication of effort (kind of against the gnu manifesto)

Huh? The manifesto requires people to not restrict others' freedom; it doesn't require them to avoid duplication of effort, or otherwise behave intelligently.

Deafy · 7 days

A bit more on ejaculate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejaculation_(grammar)

http://catholicism.about.com/od/prayers/g/Ejaculation.htm

PoopasaurusRex · 7 days

and he's still a baller!

PoopasaurusRex · 7 days

Try

http://www.gingerman-ny.com/

PoopasaurusRex · 7 days

"made" means profit, not revenue. $230,000/day is $6,900,000/month, or 138000 sq ft of pure profit. They're not full, and they have expenses, so ...

explainthestufff · 7 days

Strangely enough, this article debunking a myth, itself promotes a myth - that "Neurons in the cerebral cortex are never replaced. There are no neurons added to your cerebral cortex after birth. "

Here's the debunking of that myth.

explainthestufff · 7 days

This means that there are hundreds of pounds of dust around the world that is made up of (dead) cells from your body.

No, you're forgetting about dust mites.

dangeroustalk · 7 days

And ... under the heading of "atheists are (usually) more informed about religious beliefs than theists" .... it is impossible to "inadvertently" transubstantiate anything, even if you believe in the process.

It is a specific rite that must be expressly invoked, not just a generic blessing - and as an ex-Catholic, he should know that. Someone who tries to make a point in this way should first know what he's talking about.

zzenter · 7 days

It's worth getting the H&R Block Tax Cut software - it takes you through all the relevant questions in a readable way, and makes sure you get all the deductions and credits you're entitled to. Good luck!

MamaDaddy · 7 days

fascinant!

Moi, je pensais tout simplement a la phrase faire la pipe .... mais evidemment il y a des explications plus detaillees .... merci!

MamaDaddy · 8 days

casser sa pipe - to brake one's pipe = to die

It's worth adding that la pipe could refer to "penis", which helps us understand why breaking it could be fatal ...

JHole04 · 8 days

Science is the product of scientific research, it is the establishment of facts to the best of our ability, with certain requirements. It does not require a lab coat. ;)

You really need to make yourself aware of the extensive literature on this subject, which has nothing to do with lab coats, but has a lot more to say than the dictionary definitions you appear to be relying on.

It's not "some universities", it is "universities in some countries".

Which, unless there are no universities in any other countries, is logically equivalent to "some universities".

Pretty sure your derived version of the word "boter" also indicates a similar form of substance - e.g. cacao butter.

That is exactly my point. The sciences and history are related; they are similar in that they are both academic disciplines with (distinct) forms of professional practice. But, just as "peanut butter" is not a kind of butter in the same way that "goat butter" or "table butter" or "finishing butter" are kinds of butter, the term "social science" does not per se imply that it is a subset of science.

I never refer to myself as 'human', doesn't mean i'm not.

Let's put it this way; if you had occasion to refer to yourself as human, people listening would assent to it. Any historian who referred to themselves as 'a scientist', and then was asked, 'what kind of science', would be laughed at if they responded 'history!'. Much like the old joke about a theater manager making an announcement, "Is there a doctor in the house?", and when someone in the front row leaps up and says "Yes!", so the theater manager rushes them backstage where an actor is having a medical problem -- whereupon the audience member explains that they have a doctorate in comparative linguistics.

And i can assure you history students are told they're trained as scientists.

I would be truly fascinated to see any online documentation of that claim. Offhand references to 'history as a social science' doesn't count; I specifically said as scientists tout court, and you are claiming that happens.

Deriving scientific facts from data using a scientific method isn't science?

Strangely enough, you seem to know less about the professional practice of historians than you do about scientists. You still haven't provided an account of "the Holocaust as a scientific fact", which I think would go a long way towards demonstrating exactly where we differ.

In general, the language you're using to talk about science is somewhat archaic, and your references to "scientific fact" as the goal of either historians or scientists only serves to point this out. Perhaps if you could explain what it is you think professional historians do (without using the word 'science', so we can agree on the behavior before we decide how to classify it), we could clarify the distinction.

chrono1465 · 9 days

probes, yes, but not manned vehicles, with oxygen and water tanks which could rupture, as well as life-support containment issues... all of which are threatened by high-velocity sand...

chrono1465 · 9 days

This is the real issue. Even grains of sand going at 1000s of km/hr relative to the ship can pierce it's air containment. If we're talking about a probe, well, something will get damaged. If there are humans aboard, there's suddenly an air containment problem. And the grain of sand will pierce spacesuits, too (not to mention, skulls).

To top it all off, you also have the problems of discovering that there's an air leak, and finding it once you know it's there.

JHole04 · 9 days

You can have hypotheses used in many other domains than science. And what you were describing with your series of >s was not science itself, but of (one account of) the scientific method, which is something different. This whole discussion is about precise definitions, so precision is mandatory. Not even everything that might use the scientific method is science.

About muddying the word -- for people who care about such things, a lot of work of many, many people has gone into characterizing "science". And claiming that a field is a science because because some universities have put it in a department of social sciences is about the weakest argument one could make -- it's contingent rather than essential, and depends more on university politics than formal taxonomy.

There is something different about the way physicists do physics from the way historians do history - and that something resembles what chemists do, and what geologists do, and so on. Describing exactly what that something is isn't easy - but the generally accepted name for that something is "Science",

More generally, the term 'social science' has a history which does not situate it as a subset of 'science' - it's a separate category using the same word, just like peanut butter is not a kind of butter. Even historians employed by a Faculty of Social Sciences almost never refer to themselves as 'social scientists', and certainly never as "scientists" tout court. They're following a different professional practice, with different goals, and different forms of peer interaction, than the fields commonly identified as sciences.

JHole04 · 9 days

I think you're confused by a number of things, starting with which the idea that "hypothesis" immediately implies "science". I meant no slight to the field of History -- but trying to call it a science of any sort muddies the word enough to make it useless. Perhaps if you were aware of the field of philosophy of science (which is, itself, not a science), you'd realize how far your version is from the peer-reviewed consensus account.

JHole04 · 10 days

Yes, your smugness, with your "yes, thought so" response. And you're playing a retreating game by refusing to give your own definition after asking for mine. Your definition, which somehow makes the Holocaust a "scientific fact". So, conclusion, you don't even want to have a conversation, you have nothing to say, you're just trolling.

SThor · 10 days

It's easier to say something irrelevant when you're 100% wrong, isn't it?

So much easier to be an asshole, and dishonor people who stood up with our own armed forces after the US was attacked.

Maybe when you grow up, you'll realize that there are some things that are too important to troll about.

wonglik · 10 days

They did worse than merely lobby. When it came to the Open Office/"Office Open" fiasco getting fast-tracked as an ECMA standard, they pressured their customers to join the standards committees - so they'd be packed with pro-Microsoft votes.

Now, not only did they corrupt a standard, but the committees couldn't even meet with a quorum, because all these pressured members stopped being active once Microsoft got its vote.

JHole04 · 10 days

Now that your smugness has come out, care to share what your definition is? If it makes the Holocaust a 'scientific fact', I'm sure it's quite original.

SThor · 10 days

Ignorant idiot.

France supported the war in Afghanistan, with troops, and they sustained casualties. All because of 9/11, which didn't hurt them directly at all. They just didn't support the invasion of Iraq. Which, as we've now learned, they were 100% right about.

SThor · 10 days

More like, Parisians are New Yorkers -- what do people from Oklahoma think of New Yorkers?

In the US, we have the BiCoastals vs Middle America; in France, the equivalent scene to everything West Coast/East Coast is Paris ...

greginnj

TROPHY CASE

greginnj

TROPHY CASE

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