6 History belongs to empirical sciences Greek,
emperia
means experience. Experiences are recorded in documents. Historian researches these documents to find the
facts. Then, he will interpret the facts to find logical relationship amongst them so that it will result in historical writing. A part from the fact history has fundamental differences
from exact sciences, both base on experience and observation to find the truth. Indeed it is impossible to repeat the experiment in history, because an event happens just one time.
For example, it is impossible to repeat the already happened Indonesian Revolution, it happens just one time and then it is swallowed by the past. History just deal the past with
the surviving documents. Another difference between history and exact sciences is that historical facts is a
human facts, meanwhile the facts of exact sciences is a natural facts. Consequently some accuse history of not science, however if we notice carefully history and exact sciences
have the same working procedures, the difference is just in matter of the object. The differences between history and exact sciences are about the differences between nature
and man. Nature is a death, meanwhile man is a life. Nature is impossible to think meanwhile man is able to think. That is why exact sciences is able to formulate natural
laws which is relatively permanent and universal, not like history.
2. History has an object
Object is in the Greek
objectus
is meant by target, in the face, and objective. History often accuse of something not clear. It is usually to include history into
humanities because the object is human. Indeed history speaks about human, but its analytical approach differs from such as anthropology and sociology. Furthermore, the
object of history is time and it is peculiar to history because no other sciences have right claim to it. Physics speaks time of physic while history speaks time of human being. That
is why history speaks about the origin of the events. For example, Islam spread over Indonesia in the 8
th
or 13
th
century should not be a problem for historians if we accepted the explanations. The same case can be applied to the birth of Pancasila national
ideology of Indonesia whether it is on June 1
st
, 1945 when Soekarno mentioned Pancasila for the first time at the meeting of PPKI or on August 18
th
, 1945 when Pancasila was formally legalized in conjunction with the Constitution of Indonesia, it is
7 not a concern of historians. Historians just concern about the explanation of the evens,
meanwhile the day of celebration is a matter of political decisions.
3. History has theories In Greek,
theoria
means contemplation. Like other sciences, history also has theories of knowledge which often called philosophy of critical history. Theory contains
principles of a science. In philosophy we call it epistemology, from Greek
episteme
means the knowledge and
logos
means the discourse. Exact sciences take nature as an object of their researches, while social sciences take man as an object of their researches
and history has its own object man in dimension of time. History differs from myth, although both speak about time. Myth is not able to
answer when an event happens and history deals with this question. History also is differing itself from other social sciences because of its long tradition. In every tradition
we can find some theories.
4. History has generalization
