Bart Ehrman states: “[…] I am not a scientist. Didn’t see that one coming, huh? But it’s what this post is about. In school I was always pretty good at math, at the low levels, I did it. But I never had any interest or ability in any of the sciences. I don’t know why. My neurons don’t seem to work that way. And now I’m at a stage in life where I’m thinking that’s too bad.” (1)

Well, what Bart is talking about? 

Normally human disciplines are classified into a few large categories: Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Life Sciences. It is clear that, apart from the Humanities, “science” should include them all. But in the English language, the word science refers exclusively to the natural sciences. In German the situation is different. The term Wissenschaft does not exclusively refer to the natural sciences. Wissenschaft comes from Wissen (knowledge) and although the humanities may not be scientific, certainly it cannot be debated that they are based on knowledge. So Bart Ehrman is not forgiven for being so localized (self-concerned) not to understand that. 

In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond, accuses historians of failing to think of their profession as a science. They receive little training in acknowledged sciences and their methodologies and are not willing to amend that. So much history writing is nothing more than a mass of boring details. These details are lined up “just one more damn fact after another,” with little continuity, and less meaning.

For Diamond, Scientific History is the search for the “ultimate explanation.“

But from a man like Ehrman, running away from Christianity, it’s too much to ask.

Diamond knows his enemies, the radical skeptics who will settle for nothing less than absolute truth or simply nothing. And, since the absolute truth is an impossibility, the very idea of truth defiles any attempt to do history.

But History is and should be Science.

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