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In this article we will review the classic(well-known/traditional) debate faced by Simiand and Seignobos in the first decade of the 20th century. Generally, the epistemological aspect of the dispute is considered the main matter at stake. The debate is usually remembered due to Simiand's critique on the implicit determinisms (political, individual, chronological idol) in the historians's method. Nevertheless, the purpose of this article is to suggest a change of look in understanding this intellectual dispute. Far from exhausting the discussion on normal scientific practices' confrontation, the dispute will be studied within the framework of a broader struggle in which two candidatures (sociology and history) strives for the hegemony of the human sciences of the French university. To that end, it is necessary to analyze which institutional spaces were respectively filled by the historical and by the sociological discipline within the framework of the republican higher education. Finally, we will reflect on the lack of symmetry that characterized the relationship between both disciplines, to conclude that such disparity may be the cause of the semi-failure of the Durkheimian attack against the historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]