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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)

#81

Post by dntbnmpls »

whyenot wrote: post #74
dntbnmpls wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 "sci…

> Do you have anything to back this up?

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

"The term "social science" first appeared in the 1824 book An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness; applied to the Newly Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth by William Thompson (1775–1833). Auguste Comte (1797–1857) argued that ideas pass through three rising stages, theological, philosophical and scientific."

What do you think rising through theological, philosophical and scientific implies? The lowest being theological, the highest being scientific?

1824 was around the time of the scientific revolution and enlightenment. Everyone wanted to latch onto the good name of science.

"Karl Marx was one of the first writers to claim that his methods of research represented a scientific view of history in this model."

"One of the most persuasive advocates for the view of scientific treatment of philosophy would be John Dewey (1859–1952)."

From history to philosophy to politics, everyone wanted to associate itself with "science" because of the credibility it brought.

Even religion got into the act.

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

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

#82

Post by rdcurd »

stanfordkid wrote: post #35
swimfar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't predict how one person will react to a situation. But sometimes we can estimate, on average, how a large group of people will react. Even a lot of engineering deals with similar types of uncertainty. We build huge structures out of metal, concrete, and wood on top of soils and other geological materials, often with the assumption they they are all homogeneous with constant material properties through the str…

I think the real problem is, is that the humanities -- the social sciences in particular -- have proven themselves to consistently build bad models with unproven assumptions. These assumptions have been leveraged to directly influence policy (instead of, say, trying a lot of different things and seeing what works). Here's a concrete example of a paper [1] that just came out, attempting to impact COVID19 policy, from…

I think most, if not all self-respecting social science scholars would resent being lumped in with economists

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

#83

Post by hliyan »

enterabdazer wrote: post #63
waheoo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youre forgetting that study is optional and most of us have little to no interest in liberal arts and sciences.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436085 Do we need fancier widgets or people with the capacity for and appreciation of human development? Is the world suffering from a lack of scientific progress or a lack of sophistication in human problems? Do more people suffer from depression or insufficient software quality? Do you…

I agree. Let me reproduce the last paragraph of the top level comment I submitted above:

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)

#84

Post by sytelus »

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…

I call these hard science vs soft science. Please do not get me wrong, I shuffle from math and art quite a bit these days and get to take a look at various approaches in both areas. There is a trend of applying hard science approach to soft science. This is good thing until it results in research that is quite wishy washy. When you see "study" where experiment is mainly surveying people, its soft science. Unfortunately such soft science gets a lot of press. When you see articles like "Coffee found to reduce cancer by researchers in a study", you are reading soft science. A huge problem is that people doing hard as well as soft science are referred to as "researchers" or "scientists" and both of their works referred to as "science". But its quite not. Science demands not only evidence but understanding. If coffee was found to reduce cancer, can you elaborate exact mechanism? If you can't then science requires not to make such claims. Doing survey of graduate students is not sufficient. That's the nature of hard science which soft science (including economics) violets too often. Media needs to be more aware otherwise the trust in science that has been developed over centuries will no longer be there.

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

#85

Post by 0d9eooo »

hliyan wrote: post #79

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 come…

As someone in the behavioral/population sciences, I think there's an underlying, interesting question of "when, if ever, should quantitative methods not be applied to an area of empirical inquiry?" The article doesn't seem to address this though.

As for the social and behavioral sciences, another way of approaching it is: if you have a phenomenon, is it better to try to be scientific in explaining it or not? If not, you cede that realm to the nonscientific, with all that implies. If you do approach it scientifically, how do you do that? If your explanation or theory involves some quantity of some sort, shouldn't you then attempt to specify a model of it, and test it against observations?

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

#88

Post by kebman »

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…

Hi, there. I've studied Political Science, Film "Science" and IT. And Pedagogy. Why do I say Film "Science"? Because I had to use refuted "science" to analyze films, among other things (Freudian Analysis, which was of course groundbreaking at the time, but that does not hold up to modern scientific standards anymore). The professor said to me that, "Yes, I understand you when you say that this isn't stricly 'science,' and that it has indeed been refuted. But you see, everyone in this field does these things, and so you should too, at least for the experience, and to communicate with these people." So since he wasn't trying to force me view it as sience, I accepted it and did it on those grounds, and I passed. Despite this one incident, Film "Science" was my favourite topic at college, not least because it teaches you genre and narrative techniques. But yeah, some of it was definitively "out there," and I wouldn't classify it as science in any meaningful way, though it is a valid system to communicate ideas. Hell, even postmodernism is, which I sadly know too much about now. Too much about now.

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

#89

Post by dntbnmpls »

jccalhoun wrote: post #68
dntbnmpls wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

As someone who did my graduate work in humanities and not social science, I think there is a world of difference between social science and humanities. There might be some valid criticism of the term "social science" and the field but lumping it in with humanities isn't accurate. While there are tons of people who use mixed methods, quantitative and qualitative work tend to be very different in focus and even how the…

> As someone who did my graduate work in humanities and not social science, I think there is a world of difference between social science and humanities.

Don't say there is a difference. Name them. I too have a degree in the humanities. That isn't an argument.

> While there are tons of people who use mixed methods, quantitative and qualitative work tend to be very different in focus and even how they are written.

What's your point? Quantitative and qualitative work occur in science and in the humanities. It's not exclusive to one or the other. The difference between the two is that one deals with natural law and the empirical testing of those laws. While humanities do not. They most deal with the philosophical and the human condition. Morality or the best form of government aren't scientific concerns because they aren't about the natural world and its laws. It's not empiricial testable unlike say the speed of light.

Political science is not a science because it doesn't deal with nature and empirical experiments. Machiavelli was not a scientist because political science isn't a science.

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

#90

Post by kissickas »

sytelus wrote: post #84
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…

I call these hard science vs soft science. Please do not get me wrong, I shuffle from math and art quite a bit these days and get to take a look at various approaches in both areas. There is a trend of applying hard science approach to soft science. This is good thing until it results in research that is quite wishy washy. When you see "study" where experiment is mainly surveying people, its soft science. Unfortunate…

You had me for a second with the survey comment, but we don't know the mechanism for a lot of biology and that doesn't mean it's not a science. In fact, we didn't understand most of the things we take for granted today but that doesn't mean there were no scientists until Newton came along (or any other arbitrary point of "understanding").
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