History and the Third Culture

A regular feature of the annual meeting of the American Historical Association during the thirty-odd years of my membership has been a session on the social sciences and history. I am assured by older heads as well as by the record that the tradition goes back at least thirty years before that. I have taken part in such sessions myself. The predominant tone of the papers has been hortatory and the responses of the audience ranged from humble resignation to eager approval. It is true that from time to time a dissenter would say that things had gone too far, that the newcomers were too aggressive or presumptuous, and that history after all was an art and not a science. More often, however, the reaction to the annual exhortations was self-congratulatory. At last we had turned a corner, faced up to modern trends, and shaken off the lethargy of tradition. Hereafter things would be different. Actually, things remained very much the same, in spite of exhortations and manifestos, and have continued much the same over the years. One limited exception to the rule is a development that has occurred largely since the Second World War. The generation of historians who began to publish then had completed their formal training with the sense that they had been ill-prepared by their masters. The craft as it was taught them seemed, as one of them put it, 'an intellectually invertebrate affair', wholly lacking in sound canons of criticism, beset by contradictory concepts, and afflicted with an appalling heterogeneity of interpretations. Since no remedy for the shortcomings was apparent within the profession, some of the disenchanted turned to the social sciences for guidance and inspiration, for new clues to needed principles of order for their calling. A few vocal historians made these intentions and hopes disproportionately conspicuous in the profession. Fewer still was the number who extensively applied those methods, concepts, and findings of the social sciences in the history they wrote. With their attention focussed on the bulletins, resolutions, and

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• Dehumanizing” Economic History

  Cyril Jung•History of Political Economy•2026

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• Behavioralism and class analysis

  James R Green•Labor History•1972

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• Geschichte und Soziologie

  Open Access•Hans-Ulrich Wehler•Soziologie•1973

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• The Social History of a Village

  Open Access•Narayana Rao Bonthu, B V Sharma•Social Evolution & History•2024

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• The Revival of Quantification

  Open Access•Steven Ruggle, Steven Ruggles•Social Science History•2021

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• History QUASSHed

  Open Access•J Morgan Kousser•American Behavioral Scientist•1980

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