It started out as a typical conversation.

While talking to a professor from the biological engineering department during lunch last quarter, I introduced myself and added that I was a history major. Upon learning this, she then asked me if I just memorized a lot of facts.

I understand that this professor did not intend to ask an unkind question, and I would like to believe that a genuine curiosity of history drove her question. I could not, however, ignore my immediate reaction to her question, which is to say her words confused me. Suddenly, she reduced an entire discipline to one of the most tedious and intellectually numbing activities in academia: rote memorization.

History is the opposite of memorizing facts, because the term “facts” implies the presence of a consensus, something not inherent to history. History as a discipline requires critical analyses of the available documents — data — and an evaluation of patterns as a function of time. Rigorous historical interpretations are those that produce a nuanced understanding of the past via a fair and complete examination of documents, oral histories and other reputable sources of information. Most importantly, history is about building an interpretation of the past that at once integrates the particulars of a specific event and the contextual details of the surroundings that contributed to that event.

In my humble opinion, the processes in academic history I just described are not too different from the processes scientists use to test their hypotheses. My understanding of science, based on my experience with some of the pre-medical science classes that I took at Northwestern, is that it requires an informed hypothesis that scientists test via data collection and experimentation. But the critical part is this data is meaningless unless a human discerns patterns and draws conclusions from the figures the experiment produces. And these conclusions are valuable only if that same human applies these conclusions to real-world issues, meaning these conclusions need to be contextualized.

In an attempt to understand this professor’s question, I approached her question as a historian would evaluate a past event. For example, she told me she had had a negative experience with history in high school because she had to memorize facts and dates connected to those facts. She then told me that she did not study it further once she fulfilled her history requirements.

This conversation told me two important things. First, it appeared her negative experience with history was a result of how some teachers teach history as an amalgamation of facts organized on a timeline. I assume this method provided very few opportunities for her to grapple with the information presented to her because it involves no contestations of these facts, thereby eliminating the possibility for discussions or questions. If history classes at the collegiate level were a continuation of this type of “history,” I would not be a history major; it makes no sense to dedicate four years of my life studying an amalgamation of uncontested facts. Second, the conversation showed me her negative experience with history then shaped her perception of history in a permanent way, which in turn discouraged her from pursuing any further studies in history in college. Of course, I am using some interpretations here, but they best explain the source of her assumption-based question of history.

This entire process made me reflect on the humanities vs. science debate. I have yet to understand why there is so much emphasis on the difference between the two broad areas of academia. Organizing academic disciplines into concrete binaries that accentuate differences between the two areas of study serves no relevant purpose. This is especially true at the collegiate level, where the research methodologies that historians and scientists use share a great deal of similarities. Just because a historian studies subject matter that is different from the subject matter that a scientist may study does not mean one academic discipline is superior to the other.

Yes, it is compelling to read about the work of scientists using novel research methods to study cancer, but it is not more or less compelling than reading about the historian’s work that explores the meaning of a lynching of two African-American men in a small Indiana town during the Great Depression. Both matter.

Naomi Johnson is a Weinberg sophomore. She can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].