HISTORY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: Cochran and Hofstadter

Abstract

[Some years ago when the University of Chicago set up separate divisions of the social sciences and the humanities, the historians, puzzled about their allegiance, decided to split, some going to one division, some to the other. While this kind of Solomon’s judgment is required of few historians, the uncertainty about the place of history among the social sciences is characteristic of the contemporary American scene. In the following selections two American historians deal with the problem in markedly different fashion.