What is the aim of science? To find universal laws. Thus, if we know Physics, we can predict development of different processes. If we know Chemistry, we can predict the result of chemical reaction. So, if we knew History, we could predict the future. But we can’t. Consequently, History isn’t a true science. What do you think about it?

I've never thought of History as a science, but I do think that History has helped to spawn some pseudoscienses.

History, to me, is the flow of socio-economic and/or philosophic/religious thought changes that lead to a moment of dramatic thought change that shapes future actions.

We can't use history to predict the future because history is organic and mutable. We might be able to use history to predict the future with probability mathematics, but that's a science that's only possible on an American TV show.

Scientist would say:" Historical process has non-linear back-links".

At any rate many scientists tried to find correlations between different historical processes.

Historians use many of the tools of science to find out about the past, but the study of science is often full of guesses and unknowns. Science is full of unknowns also, but the way of finding out answers usually means spending more money and doing more precise experiments, while a lot of history we cannot find out no matter what amount we spend. I think the study of history is not quite a science but it is at least closely related to the investigative method of science.

I never thought of History as a science, Its results are hard to demonstrate and forcast can not be proved correct byt scientific methods. However as Myrddin says in investigating a case it does use scientific methods.It is at least a social science.Because it is concern with human behaviour it can't be any more.

But many scientists, including lev Gumilev with his Theory of passionarity tried to find universal laws of History.
This is an article by peter Turchin - "Transforming history into science : Arise 'cliodynamics'".

.http://tinyurl.com/6xrmwr

Each of these "modern generations have had predictable results concerning progressive/fundamental approach and the political stance concerning the generation itself: The fourth generation always leads to warfare and advances in communication always leads to enhanced warfare and destruction but only a "Nomad" who leads the hero generation to war after an increase in communication... such as the Internet... and following a conservative fundamentalist shift leads to purging of the system by war.

Generations

1433-1460 Hero - Arthurian = war
1461-1482 Artist - Humanist
1483-1511 Prophet - Reformation
1512-1540 Nomad - Reprisal
1541-1565 Hero - Elizabethan =war
1566-1587 Artist - Parliamentary
1588-1617 Prophet - Puritan
1618-1647 Nomad - Cavalier
1648-1673 Hero - Glorious =war
1674-1700 Artist - Enlightenment
1701-1723 Prophet - Awakening
1724-1741 Nomad - Liberty
1742-1766 Hero - Republican =war
1767-1791 Artist – Compromise
1792-1821 Prophet - Transcendental
1822-1842 Nomad/Hero – Gilded/Bloody shirt =war
1843-1859 Hero/Artist – Progressive/Bloody “ =war
(Note that While there is a shift this can be seen as confusing concerning reaction to events alone)
1860-1882 Prophet - Missionary
1883-1900 Nomad - Lost
1901-1924 Hero – G.I = war
1925-1942 Artist - Silent
1943-1960 Prophet - Boom
1961-1981 Nomad – Thirteenth/X
1982-? Hero - Millennial = war

Oh by the way: you might note that WWII is not mentioned above.
While the Japanese did attack America it is widely held (with which I agree of course otherwise I would not highlight it) that WWII was simply a continuation of WWI just as the war of 1812 was simply a continuation of the revolutionary war.

Welcome back Wax .

I think the problem with considering history a science has to do with perspective...its a matter of time scale. On the micro scale of human experience, history appears chaotic and unpredictable. Perhaps advances in chaos theory will allow us to better understand and predict short term historical happenings. On the longer term though, we can indeed observe patterns and determine laws much as we do in the physical sciences. Wax touches on that a little with his discussion of generational patterns. At the micro level history is sort of like fluid mechanics reduced to a similar micro level. The movement of individual fluid particles appears chaotic and random. When we expand our perspective and look at the fluid as a mass rather than as a collection of independent particles we can indeed discover and apply scientific laws. Those applications allow us to make predictions about the behaviors of fluids at a macro level. Similarly, if we expand our perspective of history we are probably going to discover these macro level laws that will allow us to make predictions.