All History and Policy

Abstract

Social science originated in the study of history and the desire to inform collective decisions, with often contentious efforts by budding social scientists to separate themselves in organization and status from historians and social reformers. Despite active distancing from this inheritance, social scientists are still limited by both the variation available from human history and the usefulness of our findings in policy. We are all searching for patterns across the times we can observe and subject to the goals of our societies. Since the contemporary context affects our questions and interpretations, we can acknowledge our reformist impulses as well as learn from historians’ approaches to counteracting presentism. We erred in thinking of our enterprise as fundamentally distinct: social scientists should accept our role in systematizing history and informing policy debate, rather than seek to replace either.