Can History Be Accurate Analysis

History is an area of knowledge that is subject to a lot of bias; it examines past events with limited evidence. This means that the data that is missing is subject to the interpretation of the historian. Knowledge must be accurate; it has to reflect what is observed in reality. If it is not held to this standard, anything becomes knowledge. Anyone could say anything and have it be knowledge. 1 + 1 = 4 becomes equally valid as 1 + 1 = 2. Only one of these statements is accurate, and so only one is considered to be knowledge. Only when our knowledge matches what we observe in the world can it be considered accurate. So, where does this leave history? Can knowledge about the past be accurate, without being correct? History is very different from the natural sciences. In the natural sciences, you can test hypotheses, and confirm that your knowledge is accurate. We can make a prediction, develop a test, and get a result. Then we can use reason to determine if our prediction of matches the result. History faces a simple

You could argue that historians interpretations are based off of evidence, or that their interpretations are the application of human sciences. However, both of these arguments have a flaw. If the historians are interpolating between evidence, there is no reason to think that they have it right. While it is possible that they do, or have gotten close to the correct answer, we cannot tell. They could be completely wrong, and we would be unable to distinguish it from a correct answer. It cannot be proven to be accurate, because we cannot test it, so we cannot call it knowledge. Applying the human sciences leaves a similar error. The human sciences cannot perfectly predict human behaviour. The predictions it provides about figures in history may or may not be correct, and we have no way to know the difference. Again, we cannot test it, cannot confirm its accuracy, and therefore cannot consider it