This conflates social science with the humanities. I agree with respect to the humanities. Less so with respect to social science. People in large groups do in general follow certain trends and we do have decent ways of establishing causation. Now there is a lot of stuff that people do that we can't analyze quantitatively due to lack of data or other blockers. For these qualitative methods will have to do. Fine, but…
Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)
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Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)
#42You can analyze a book by saying it has certain number of pages, each one with certain amount of paper and ink, and you can use that to determine the chemical composition of the paper and the ink.
That will not tell you what the book is about, though.
Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you describe continental drift, it doesn’t make the plates go faster. When you do economics, it changes the economy. Social sciences have a worse reflexivity problem than the arts, because with art, nothing turns on whether it’s right or wrong. With social sciences, if your hypothesis is wrong but widely believed, you can still kick off seventy years of communism.
We also got eugenics based on “science”
Eugenics was an idea pondered by the ancient Greeks. I’m not defending it, but it’s not the brainchild of a certain genocidal political party that many people seem to think it is.
Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)
#44This is a terrible article.
First of all, the introduction which bashes the paper which applying social network techniques to fiction? If the author had bothered to look it up, they would have realized the authors are an applied mathematician and theoretical physicist. Not humanities.
Then they goes on to criticize political science and psychology as their poster children for the humanities, except these are social sciences, and only "humanities" in a very broad umbrella term. "Humanities" is more often used to refer to disciplines such as history, art, literature. So a complete mix-up of fields.
Third, the assumption that social sciences has a "reliance, insistence, even, on increasingly fancy statistics and data sets to prove any given point" is simply flat-out wrong. For example, of course political science relies on "big-N" studies which try to find or refute correlations between democracy and various other country indicators. But political science also relies heavily on "comparative politics" which is much closer to literature or history in a classic "compare and contrast" aspects of two countries. Similarly psychology has many different approaches taken in published papers and books, some quantitative and others more qualitative.
I could go on and on. But this article is completely ridiculous, arguing against a straw man that simply doesn't exist. It's like the author isn't even familiar with academia. Bizarre.
Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)
#45One of the most valuable courses I took as an undergrad was an anthropology course. In it, we studied the life of JR Oppenheimer and his relationship with the government patrons of his science. The sort of scoundrels naturally attracted to power will always find cynical use for talent of the kind possessed by Oppenheimer. However, every aspect of such a relationship will be thoroughly cynical. If you are a future STE…
Was it beyond Oppenheimer's intellect and imagination to comprehend what he was doing? Sort of like nazi Germany having no idea what was happening to the jews?
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Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)
#46This reminds me a little bit of the push to add “art” to STEM schools.
Are the arts so insecure that they need to be apart of stem to have any self worth?
You can perform perfectly good science outside of the stem factory. They dont have a monopoly.
But given the scientific rigor ive seen in the arts I would appreciate if they maintain a clear and separate distinction from stem.
Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)
#47Makes me think of the joke on "Big Bang Theory" (which am almost ashamed to admit enjoying): Caricatured dumb humanities major: "That's what I love about math, there's no one right answer!"
The most funny part is that this is effectively true.
Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)
#48This conflates social science with the humanities. I agree with respect to the humanities. Less so with respect to social science. People in large groups do in general follow certain trends and we do have decent ways of establishing causation. Now there is a lot of stuff that people do that we can't analyze quantitatively due to lack of data or other blockers. For these qualitative methods will have to do. Fine, but…
I’m not even sure the paper he starts off criticizing is that problematic - it sounds like it’s basically a quantitative study of various tropes in fiction and comparing it to real data.
Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)
#49This is a terrible article. First of all, the introduction which bashes the paper which applying social network techniques to fiction? If the author had bothered to look it up, they would have realized the authors are an applied mathematician and theoretical physicist. Not humanities . Then they goes on to criticize political science and psychology as their poster children for the humanities, except these are social…
A lot of people have been and continue to make this criticism that’s in the article, across a variety of the softer disciplines. (It’s like you’re not even familiar with this line of critique.)
See, eg. a criticism of political science in the same vein from a political scientist https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Political-Science-Beca...
Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)
#50Why are they even taught in colleges? They're more of a hobby thing really (and more enjoyable that way imo)
Because music, history, and literature are just as important to human society as math, computer science, and physics. This unthinking disrespect for the humanities is embarrassing.
Unthinking respect for the humanities is embarrassing. Exactly why do they deserve respect? (hint: they don't)