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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
historians aren't good at explaining why things happened ... because all explanations of "why" are based on ... a pre-existing mental model. Economists are by no means immune to this syndrome.[/quote]

Yes, but economists have many fully articulated quantitative models, and statistical techniques for distinguishing them: double sorts, multiple regression, natural experiments, discontinuity measures, and instrumental variables.

I recall one disagreement where historians claimed that slave punishment was more severe on deep-South plantations than East Coast plantations, and attributed this difference to a meaner Southern culture.  Economists instead suggested that the Eastern climate produced more valuable long-fiber cotton that required skill and care to harvest.  In that case, carrots work better than sticks to make slaves productive.  The data are inadequate to decisively settle this, but it illustrates economists thinking.[/quote]

Your description of history as a discipline is simply not true. Historians would definitely make an argument like the above you attribute to economists. There are many different kinds of history – intellectual, social, cultural, economic. College students study all of those if they major in history[/quote]

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