Hi Billy, On Jan 18, 2014, at 11:41 AM, [email protected] wrote: > The reason why social science and its purveyors often gets such a bad rap has > less to do with the rigor of their methods and more to do with the perplexity > of their subject matter. Humanity and its cultural constructs are more > enigmatic than much of the natural world. Even Feynman recognized this. > "Social problems are very much harder than scientific ones," he noted. Social > science itself may be an enterprise doomed, not necessarily to fail, just to > never fully succeed. Utilizing science to study something inherently > unscientific is a tricky business.
I am sympathetic to both sides of the argument. Let’s face it, a lot of so-called ‘hard science’ is non-reproducible, so it is foolish to give them too much credit. My bigger critique of the social sciences is that too much of it is non-paradigmatic. There is no clear way to: a) resolve arguments b) Identify areas of exploration that would disprove the dominant paradigm Yes, a lot of that is due to the complexity of the subject matter. And much of the rest is the same institutional problems that lead to inaccuracy in the “hard” sciences. But there is also a contribution from cultural factors (like political correctness), which in theory could be removed. Well, at least if we had a solid enough social science theory to guide us… — Ernie P. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
