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Production Revolutions and the Periodization of History
With regard to social disciplines, a question continually arises: are mathematical methods fit for analyzing historical and social processes? Obviously, we should not absolutize differences between fields of knowledge, but the division of sciences into two opposite types, made by W. Windelband and H. Rickert, is still valid. As is known, they singled out sciences involving nomo-thetic methods, i.e., looking for general laws and generalizing phenomena, and those applying idiographic methods, i.e., describing individual and unique events and objects. Rickert attributed history to the second type. In his opinion, history always aims at picturing an isolated and more or less wide course of development in all its uniqueness and individuality