THE PROBLEM OF EXPERIENCE IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCE

Abstract

This paper discusses the problem of experience in the historical science, the relevance of which is due to new representations related to changes of views on the role of historical sources. Historical source is no longer considered inviolable basis – along with it, out-of-source knowledge is recognised, whose part or variety is the historical experience, experiment. The author explores the difference between the properties and content of the experience in general and the experiment as a kind of experience which has its own characteristics. The paper also shows the changes in historical science related to the existence of two main traditions (modernist and postmodernist), which led to the transformation of ideas about the possibility of using the experience in historical research In the end, the author concludes that the experience has two basic meanings: “external experience”, or experiment, and the experience which is not amenable to scientific verification but relies in the truth as a goal. With the experiment the reality of science is reproduced, so the tradition of modernism, where historical reality was considered actually existing, readily admits experimental investigation. In postmodern historical reality is not recognized as current, so it suggests using the so-called “historical experience” – the experience of feelings and experience of activity.