On the Analysis of History and the Interdependence of the Social Sciences

Article published in the «Philosophy of Science» — 1960 — Vol. 27 — No. 2 (Apr.) — pp. 147-158.The views of some historians and philosophers of history as to the possibility of fruitful historical generalization seem at odds with the underlying methodology of the other social sciences. A formal model of the world historical process is here presented within which this apparent contradiction is seen to be resolvable in terms of modern theories of probability and stochastic processes. This is done by giving rigorous form to procedures and statements in the social sciences. A formal treatment of the dependence of an investigation in one discipline on previous studies both in that area and in other social and natural sciences then follows naturally.