Yes, but history and archeology often DO have ways of testing or demonstrating, by finding evidence, sometimes literally digging it out of the ground or learning an extinct language or looking through archives, etc...
And you are making non sequitur arguments. I am not claiming that the existence of a difference of methodologies constitute a difference between inferior and superior disciplines. I am simply disagreeing with your characterization, largely inherited from other posters here such as smartcooky and Hans which you have run with, that the difference between the hard sciences and soft sciences are that the former are testable and demonstrable, and the latter are not. That is far too sweeping and quite obviously false.
I'm pretty sure I'm the one that provided that definition. I could be wrong, I suppose. I don't imagine it's a novel definition.
It has been pointed out to you that many things in history, philosophy and archeology ARE testable and are demonstrable, but in some cases, they simply haven't been yet, but may still be. This is not exactly very different, except by degree, from many of the hard sciences such as physics, where we can ask questions which we may never have ways of testing or demonstrating whether something is or is not a fact.
And? Yes, of course some things are testable and demonstrable. I don't think I've said otherwise.
Here, let me try a different approach. As a generality, based on nothing but your own intuition and feelings about it... what percent of all areas of physics would you say is testable and demonstrable? What percentage of all the areas of philosophy would you say is testable and demonstrable? Would you consider those intuitive percentages to be close together?
Moral relativism is not the only relativism. There is also epistemic relativism, and what you say here smacks of it: "whether you like it or not, current beliefs and feelings absolutely do influence the interpretation of historical events." I am not sure what you mean by "like it or not". What you are saying is either trivially true, which is that there can be an objective truth that looks different depending on who and where we look at it from, which is not something I am disputing. I agree with it, but that doesn't diminish my point.
OR... you are denying any inherent truth about it and saying that the various differing perspectives negate the possibility of objectivity. If you are saying that, then you are being an epistemic relativist.
Okay.
I think it's trivially true. But I also have a strong impression that other people in this thread do NOT think it's trivially true.
This gets complicated for me to put into words. That's a me thing, so bear with me please.
A thing can be a thing, completely independent of any observer, or even any knowledge that the thing is a thing. An observer isn't necessary for a thing to be a thing. But if there isn't an observer, nobody knows that the thing is even a thing in the first place. We cannot know what we don't know exists.
That said, of course people can look at a thing from different perspectives, and draw different conclusions. Because most things look different when seen from different perspectives. I think that's trivially true too, isn't it?
But those perspectives don't make truth and falsehood relative. It makes them at best incomplete. The truth or falsehood of a thing is independent of the perspective from which it's viewed. But if there is only one way of looking at it, a false conclusion may be drawn, and if only one person looks at it and says "it's a blargedyflarg!" then nobody knows it's anything other than a blargedyflarg. The only way to determine whether it actually is or is not a blargedyflarg is to find a way to test it. If a way to test it - which necessitates a different perspective to at least some extent - finds that it is NOT a blargedyflarg, then it's been demonstrated to be false. If that test concludes it's a blargedyflarg, then other tests will be done, and will continue to be done, until we're confident that the likelihood of it actually being, in reality a blargedyflarg, is high enough to be accepted as true.
Our limited and sometimes wrong interpretation of things doesn't alter what they actually are. The objective world exists independent of observers.
All of which is now immensely esoteric, probably a bit sophomoric on my part, and a rather spectacular (but fun and interesting) diversion from the topic of the thread.
