I love Theory Thursday, and it's been so blank recently, so let me just ask two open questions:

i) Is history among the social sciences? Or is it among the humanities? At many universities that have "divisions", history is classed among the social sciences (Chicago and Berkeley, for example). At others, it is a humanity. For me, the answer was always clear: it's a social science. While the humanities cover subjective aesthetic (as in English) or normative guidelines (as in philosophy), history focuses on facts and truths of a different kind. Economists, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists (psychologists less so) rely heavily on the work of historians across the board, which is quite unlike their relationships with literature, music, art history, theology, etc. (little to none) or philosophy (only in very specific subfields, especially "theory"). I have always thought of social sciences having two poles, history facing the humanities and economics facing the natural sciences, with most of the other fields falling between the two (very roughly: history, anthropology, geography, sociology, political science, linguistics, psychology, economics). However, while my PhD will be in sociology, my identity is as much "social scientist" as it will be "sociologist". I tend to think that historians don't have the same identity.

ii) How do you think about causation in history? Like, obviously, it's rare to use statistical causal inference, but I wonder if you think good history should be making causal arguments. In sociology right now, causation is very hot. In economics, people will argue sometimes it's the only important thing (that's more in theory than practice, in my experience), my friend in anthropology could not care less about causal arguments. So, historians, what is "your job"? Are causal arguments in history necessary, a boon, nothing particularly special, or a distraction? And do you think there's a tension between description and causal arguments?