The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

assumptions, first of all that the sources may speak for themselves. This is not a tenable
assumption. Any historical exposition is based on a theory. The only difference is whether it
is explicit. In history theories tend to be implicit and the historian bases his analysis on his
own assumptions about human motivations, social forces etc. (cf. Morley 2004). These are
not shaped by explicit, tested theories, but by folk notions and the historians own subjective
experience of the world. That is perhaps also why every generation of historians has to write
its own history. What actually distorts the material is a lack of explicit theorizing.
“There is an essential difference between history and science. Science works by reducing
phenomena to deterministic laws. This cannot account for history since human behavior
cannot be reduced to any such law”. This objection is founded on two misunderstandings of
the nature of science. a) It seems that the historian fears that scientific reduction will render
the historical discipline obsolete, because a lower level of explanation will replace the higher.
There are however no examples of such a usurpation of a higher level science by a lower
level one (McCauley 1986: 197). b) The conceptualization of law as a deterministic
statement on reality is a dated remnant of a 19 th century logical positivist conception of law
which thrives in classical history (Morley 2004: 15). This kind of law applies in every case
and can be falsified if a situation arises in which it does not accurately predict an occurrence.
It is correct that we do not find this kind of law in history, but it is not sufficient to disqualify
it as a science. Contemporary views in scientific theory prefer to speak of invariance instead
of laws (e.g. Woodward 2000: 205-209). Invariance is a question of degree and may apply
locally not necessarily universally. Counterexamples are therefore not falsifications that
render the search for regularities futile.
So far so good, but we still have to deal with a number of possible objections to a cognitive
approach to history from cognitive scientists: “The results do not live up to scientific
standards of verification. The evidence is too sparse to prove anything”. To this, one could
point out that not all psychological research lives up to these standards either. Evolutionary
psychology, the branch of psychology investigating the evolutionary origins of human
cognition, typically does not adduce any evidence of the historical processes stipulated. As
for the history it is pure (informed) guesses without any direct evidence. If one would want to
dismiss a cognitive approach to history, which actually has some evidence, on the objection
that the evidence is not good enough, one would also have to dismiss evolutionary
psychology altogether. The objection that there is not enough evidence is not a valid criticism
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