Q&A: Archaeology
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Archaeology
Question
Is archaeology an exact science like physics and biology? After all, those too are built on synthetic assumptions, and hypotheses also play a role in them. Or is it scientific only to the same degree that history and psychology are?
Answer
I don’t know how to measure the degree of scientificness of a field. It is clear that in archaeology and history there are lots of unfounded hypotheses. They also cannot really be subjected to falsification tests in the accepted sense. Psychology, in principle, can be (see the column I wrote about this). So the fact that all of our thinking is built on synthetic assumptions does not mean there is no difference between different fields.