I'm afraid I must quibble with the incidental aside in a recent posting to the affect that  "history generally lacks the methodology [of] the social sciences...."
  My quibble provides an opportunity to recommend John Lewis Gaddis's recent The Landscape of History (Oxford University Press), which makes a very cogent argument that History's methodology is actually more sophisticated and deep than the so-called social sciences - and indeed that in its similarities to astronomy, physics, paleantology, etc. Gassis is especially good at showing how History, with its recognition of the interdependence of dependent variables in the real world, is actually _more_ scientific than the so-called social sciences (political science, economics, sociology, etc.) which are crippled by their quixotic pursuit of so-called independent variables.....  Those familiar with Marc Bloch, E. H. Carr, and R. G. Collingwood will enjoy Gaddis's updating of their insights.
  For grade-school and high- school pedagogy, it does seem to me that well taught History, with its attention to the specificity of personality and of events without regard to how they fit into some abstracted system, is far less likely to put young people to sleep and far more likely to provide them with a useful perspective on the workings of humankind.
  Of course, at my undergraduate college the History Department fell within the Social Science Division. My undergrad mentor said it gave some intellectual rigor to that Division.

Jon Kukla


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