Although the object of research and the subject matter of...

Although the object of research and the subject matter of scienti­fic history are the events and episodes of the past, the laws which it deduces are not specifically confined to the past. They have the ability of being generalized in order to be applied to the present and the future also. This aspect of history makes it very useful, making it one of the sources of man's knowledge regarding himself, and enables him to exercise control over his own future.

The difference between the task of a researcher in the field of scientific history and a researcher in the natural sciences is notable. The material of research for the natural scientist is a chain of real and verifi­able occurrences that are present. Hence, necessarily, all his investiga­tions, analyses, and results are empirical and verifiable. But the material on which a historian works belongs to the past and does not exist in the present.

What is accessible to a historian now is only a bundle of chronicles about the past. A historian is like a judge in a court of law who decides on the basis of circumstantial evidence and indications on record in his files, not on the basis of the testimony of any eye‑witness. In this way, the analysis of a historian is logical, rational, and mental, not one based upon verifiable external evidence.

A historian makes his analysis in the laboratory of his mind and intellect, with the instru­ments of logic and inference, not in the external physical laboratory with instruments of observation and measurement. Hence, the job of a historian is more akin to that of a philosopher than of a scientist. Scientific history, like traditional history, is concerned with the past, not with the present.

It is the knowledge of `being' not of `becoming.' But unlike traditional history it is general, not particular; it is rational, not based upon tradition. Scientific history is actually a branch of sociology; i.e. it is a socio­logical study of the societies of the past. The subject of sociology includes the study of the past and the present societies.

However, if we restrict sociology to the study of contemporary societies, then scientific history and sociology should be considered as two disciplines, separate but closely related, complementary, and dependent upon each other. Philosophy of history is based upon the knowledge of gradual changes and transformations which lead societies from one stage to another. It deals with the laws governing these transformations and changes.