Are the human sciences more like history or the natural sciences?

Are the human sciences more like history or the natural sciences?

When looking at this question one must first identify the key terms. 

Human sciences- study of the interactions, activities, and artifacts related to humans.

Natural Sciences- the study of the rules and concepts that make up the natural world.

History- the study of previous occurrences, usually relating to human related events.

The human studies are more related to history due to the fact it revolves around the past and the repetition of patterns in human related events. If we look at psychology, which is one of the human sciences, it revolves around how the mind functions and certain behaviors connected to certain functions. By using history as a reference we are able to look for reoccurring patterns in human behavior over centuries and connect why certain actions are taken by certain people in certain situations. Our brains have been accustomed to processing new pieces of information in patterns so that we can relate new experiences to older ones and adjust. My personal connection to the constant change and recognition of patterns is the fact I have gone to 4 different schools in my life. Being the new kid so often caused me to come into school the first day and identify the social cliques in order to adjust accordingly. Due to past experiences it has almost become automatic for me to walk into a new area and immediately begin to observe everybody else. I personally try to avoid talking too much at first and instead prefer to watch how each individual communicates with the other and how certain people respond and react to different situations. I wouldn't go as far as to say that I am an amateur anthropologist, but I find the connection between past experiences and how they affect our form of interpreting present situations and adapting to be explicit. B.F. Skinner, considered one of the greatest psychologists, was one of the leaders in behavioralism. Behavioralism is a school of psychology that believes that human behavior can be trained and molded into anything through conditioning. Conditioning occurs through human interaction with the environment, which further shows that our minds are truly delicate and prone to change depending on the experiences that we go through. Albert Bandura, a professor of psychology at Stanford university, says, "Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do." Once again we see that we as humans look to past experience as a form of guidance to make what would seem to be rational decisions because of the outcome of that decision in a previous situation. 

Taking into account the evidence previously presented it can't be denied that there are connections between human sciences and natural sciences, which would support the nature dynamic of the nature vs nurture argument. In human science we can study the brain in an depth manner which would bring a lot of previously ignored insight from the nurture point of view. Scientists at Cal Tech did a study using information from The University of Iowa which showed that the decisions and choices made by human beings are decided in the frontal lobe of the brain. With the knowledge of where in the brain our ability to interpret situations and act a certain way lie we could find a way to manipulate the human brain and create a set standard for all humans. We must also look at the limitations of a human science such as psychology. In the previous example although behavioralism analyzes the behavior of people it doesn't take emotion and internal thought into account., instead it focuses solely on the way somebody acts not taking into account the possibility that the presence of someone watching them could affect the way in which the subject acts. In a very interesting study by the psychology and neuroscience departments at The University of Michigan and three other universities in Canada it was found the brain is not a static organ. The way our brain functions is constantly changing, but since it is our own conscious we do not realize that there is no assured stability as to how the mind will develop itself. This fact takes away from the consistency that we usually associate with psychology as a field of study.

None the less, it is clear that Human Sciences can be connected to both History and  the Natural Sciences, but with a stronger connection to the field of History because of it's constant recognition and study of why and how certain events unfolded over the course of hundred's of years. So although there are two sides history seems to prevail every time. 

Roberto Fajardo