On the Use and Abuse of Neuroscience for History

Over the past century, psychological, and neurological approaches to historical research have foundered time and again. The recent turn to a neuroscientific grounding for approaches to history claims to sidestep if not overcome this troubled tradition—a tradition it barely acknowledges. Yet the fallowness of the field it proposes remains not only untested, and perhaps untestable, but frequently premised on unclear if not troubled experimental grounds. This paper raises a series of fundamental epistemological doubts regarding certain uses of neuroscience (including neuroscientific experiments) in historical writing today, by focusing on experimental and epistemological claims widely involved in current theoretical writing on history.