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Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#71

Post by minkzilla »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #7
everyone wrote: post #2

Why are they even taught in colleges? They're more of a hobby thing really (and more enjoyable that way imo)

Because not everybody wants to be in STEM. And because even those who are in STEM need to know that humanity does not live by STEM alone. (We'd like our STEM to treat people like humans, rather than like machines.) A "liberal education" originally meant that those who pursued it were free. They weren't pursuing an education of mere techniques, which was for slaves. Even today, there is a place for learning things tha…

Plenty of non stem majors are very rigorous. Philosophy is particularly so. My undergraduate roommate wrote a 50 page paper that had to have original ideas that was critiqued by professors who are quite adept at spotting fallacies and picking apart arguments.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#72

Post by scollet »

torrance wrote: post #33

I would add to this list economics. Oxford Economist Kate Raeworth has made the exact same argument about her own discipline and the allure of the ‘hardness’ of maths and physics. The way early 20th century increasingly turned to Newtonian-like mechanistic descriptions of economic processes, reductionist and absurd ideas about ‘human nature’, and extracting Universal laws from historical and accidental correlations.…

Do you think there is a factor of unknowns in both economics and humanities (disparate) that challenge scientific study? I.e. humanities and a further extension of art is currently immeasurable. If this sounds like a loaded question, I don't know how to phrase it correctly.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#74

Post by whyenot »

dntbnmpls wrote: post #61
crazygringo wrote: post #44

This 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…

> Then they goes on to criticize political science and psychology as their poster children for the humanities, except these are social sciences Social sciences are a humanities. The term social science was invented fairly recently by sneaky academics to leech off the credibility of actual science. > It's like the author isn't even familiar with academia. Are you? This issue with "social science" has been going on for…

> Social sciences are a humanities. The term social science was invented fairly recently by sneaky academics to leech off the credibility of actual science.

> The name social science was invented by hacks just like creation science was invented by hacks because real science ( biology, physics, chemistry, etc ) has such a good reputation and they didn't so they decided to manufacture some credibility by attaching "science" to their fields.

Do you have anything to back this up? According to Wikipedia's rather extensive article on the history of the social sciences, the term first appeared in 1824, and the discipline was pretty well established by the turn of the 20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_social_sciences

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#75

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

crazygringo wrote: post #44

This 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…

It may sound silly, but the article seems like a caricature of Big Bang's Sheldon disdain for social sciences. All the ingredients are there ready for easy consumption.

In all seriousness, there some valid criticisms of social sciences, but the article reads like a pop version of them.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#76

Post by Chathamization »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #7
everyone wrote: post #2

Why are they even taught in colleges? They're more of a hobby thing really (and more enjoyable that way imo)

Because not everybody wants to be in STEM. And because even those who are in STEM need to know that humanity does not live by STEM alone. (We'd like our STEM to treat people like humans, rather than like machines.) A "liberal education" originally meant that those who pursued it were free. They weren't pursuing an education of mere techniques, which was for slaves. Even today, there is a place for learning things tha…

> Even today, there is a place for learning things that don't have a direct economic impact, as part of becoming an educated person.

Sure, but we shouldn't assume that college is the appropriate place to do so or that the way colleges teach the humanities is effective. If your supermarket forced you to do aerobic exercises before entering, I'm not sure a good justification for it would be "well, aerobic exercise is good for you and not everything is about buying food."

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#78

Post by dorchadas »

Chathamization wrote: post #76
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because not everybody wants to be in STEM. And because even those who are in STEM need to know that humanity does not live by STEM alone. (We'd like our STEM to treat people like humans, rather than like machines.) A "liberal education" originally meant that those who pursued it were free. They weren't pursuing an education of mere techniques, which was for slaves. Even today, there is a place for learning things tha…

> Even today, there is a place for learning things that don't have a direct economic impact, as part of becoming an educated person. Sure, but we shouldn't assume that college is the appropriate place to do so or that the way colleges teach the humanities is effective. If your supermarket forced you to do aerobic exercises before entering, I'm not sure a good justification for it would be "well, aerobic exercise is g…

I guess it really depends on what you think the purpose of college is. To me, that's exactly what college and high school should be for -- learning things that don't have a direct economic impact but that make you a more educated/well-rounded person. They shouldn't just be about job training, which should be focused in technical schools, and it actually saddens me that so many think the purpose of university/high school should be job training (really, that should be the companies themselves, but of course they don't want to pay the money to invest in their hires).

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#79

Post by hliyan »

Perhaps the currency of social sciences should be anecdotes with full context (of which you can obviously get only a limited number unless you have unlimited budget) rather than collecting extensive data points on a limited number of variables. While physical systems can be approximated (or some independent variables dropped) without affecting the aspect being studied (think perfectly spherical objects), when it comes to humans, there are no independent variables. Approximation or simplified models are much harder.

I think looking for statistical patterns (e.g. in literature) is perfectly good science as long as you are cognizant that patterns merely invite more study an should not be used to reach conclusions, also being aware that patterns might disappear when you expand your data set.

Finally, as someone trained in the physical sciences, I used to look down on social scientists. I no longer do this. At least they're brave enough to tackle a complex monster with the limited tools at their disposal, stumbling and even enduring ridicule from the hard sciences. We ignore the human mind and collections thereof, because it's too complex and prefer the relative comfort of simple, predictable systems. I don't believe that's good.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#80

Post by 0d9eooo »

neonate wrote: post #34
guerrilla wrote: post #30

"Psychology is not a natural science." I used to think this and to a certain extent I still do but the fact is that the feild has changed and become much more reproducible as time passes and it matures. More importantly though this article conflates humanities with social sciences pretty badly. This is quite insulting to sociology and even more so to economics and anthropology. Physical antrho is pretty serious scien…

Psychology hasn't simply become more reproducible. It has been gutted by a reproducibility crisis and it remains to be seen what the outcome will be.

The reproducibility crisis extends far beyond psychology. Psychologists are the messengers, just like they were with meta-analysis in the 60s and 70s.

Similar problems have been demonstrated in a host of fields, mostly the biomedical sciences. To take one prominent example, HN has been plastered with articles about COVID studies of dubious quality.

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