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I think of history as being a science of the humanities, primarily because you have to provide evidence for what you're claiming. People who do PhDs in history are just like graduate students in biology or chemistry: they seek data for analysis. Lots of data!!

I'm not sure I understand the criticism of the field (or of the humanities in general) that's going on in this thread. I'm a scientist and understand that it's essential to have a society that's technologically literate. But I also have a degree in history and took a lot of undergraduate classes in philosophy and English literature.

The humanities force us to think about ideas and what they mean in a way that science and technology don't. Science and technology (especially these days) are all about moving forward --- fast. When we move too quickly without thinking about the potential ramifications of our actions, we risk getting ourselves into trouble. As only a single example out of probably hundreds or thousands I could come up with, history teaches us about what can happen as a consequence of actions. When the historical record is good, we can analyze exactly what happened, how things went right or wrong, and how to prevent or repeat events of the past.

Technology is a wonderful thing, but we need to ground ourselves in philosophy and history and many other areas in order to understand how we (as individual societies and as a species) tend to react to events and how we deal with change and other important things.

I suppose I'm arguing in favor of what I've called thoughtfulness in another thread. Philosophy, great works of literature and art, history, and other areas of the humanities play a huge role in that respect.