The historian as artist or the historian as scientist?

The readings this week were all about how technological advancements are affecting the kinds of questions historians are asking and how these technologies have the potential to transform historic knowledge. Many of the pieces including articles by Roy Rozenweig and Stuart Fox brought up the potential for a complete historic record. Obviously there is no way make an archive that contains every piece of human knowledge and experience, but with the proliferation of information online and improvements in digital archives, the records left by inhabitants of the 21st century will far exceed all those before us. With so much information soon to be available, the question is how will future historians make history?

It is foreseeable that the proliferation of new technological methods such as scraping in combination with the exponentially growing amounts of historic material available online will result in more and more studies whose scientifically quantifiable nature more closely resemble sociological studies. In a future where the abundance of historic material makes broad social histories more achievable than ever before I have to wonder whether there will be yet another split amongst the history community. Librarians and archivists broke from academic history in order to distinguish information management and organization as a distinct and important field of study. Will historians who continue to produce subjective interpretations based on their close consultations of a limited scope of primary sources break away in a similar matter in order to protect their methodologies? Must the historian as artist and the historian as scientist be mutually exclusive?

I have personally have always thought of history as an art. I find the concept of social sciences to be a rather disingenuous attempt at dismissing the subjective and unpredictable nature of human interactions. Though history is most often classified as a humanity, it seems hard to shake this idea that scientifically quantifiable knowledge is more valid than subjective interpretations. This is not to say I do not recognize the value of these broader sociological histories. Ideally, they will build a unprecedented knowledge base that that the historian as artist can then use as a platform for their more nuanced inquiry. However, ideals are not always practical.

The problem I anticipate is that of audience. As earlier mentioned, Western society generally privileges quantifiable knowledge however this pretense of authenticity can be deceptive. In much the same way that statistics can be manipulated to suit various agendas,  seemingly scientific historic "truths" can lull consumers into a false sense of certainty. History as art is more difficult as it relies heavily on the interpretation of primary sources and involves an in-depth level of analysis and critical thinking. Bite-size snacks of information are far easier to consume. There may still be an audience for detailed histories of famous persons; enthusiasts will likely still pursue as much information as they can find on renowned figures such as Barack Obama, but what of the "Big History" nobodies who currently inform our social histories? Limited funding means that prioritization can be a harsh reality.

Perhaps I am just clinging onto dated methodologies (though these methods will remain relevant to the pre-digital era) but I feel it is important to recognize the value of the art of history before we start integrating more scientific methods. An integration of these methods would make historic knowledge more accurate and relevant than ever, but we must remain aware both of the tendency of Western society to privilege scientific knowledge and the value and limitations of traditional historic methods.