Sociology

[Thorbal]

Whoa, a grown up!

Somehow I don´t know if I should be offended or feel flattered .

Yea, sure. Soft science is quantitative, kinda. It's purpose is to descibe a condition and elicit causation. Hard science's purpose is to record empirical data. Not exactly the same thing.

Hm... I really don´t see the difference, sorry. Sociology, for example, is increasingly able to set up "laws" with a very high accuracy ( ok, it is not a 100% accuracy, that is a difference ) based on a certain cultural situation and background by collecting empirical data. If you know how to express this given cultural background into a set of formulas, these "laws" are excitingly accurate, with a certain uncertainty factor, which can be narrowed down quite a lot. The only difference I see is that in "hard science" ( I am somehow unfriendly towards this term ) you can have absolute certainty. The methods are surprisingly similar imo.

 

[Ecofarm]

The methods are surprisingly similar imo.

Ahh, methodology. The always scrapped section of a good thesis (the pros can see the bias without you spelling it out).

Participatory? Objective? Hah. There is no participatory method in the hard sciences, nor is there a comparative method. Those methods/methodologies are exclusive to soft science (economics, anthropology, ecology).

Would you claim there is a participatory or comparitive method to physics, math, chemistry (excepting QSAR), or biology (excepting species classification)? They are the foundation of modern anthropology, if nonexistant in hard sciences. Try to study development without Chamber's participatory methodology. Try to study anthropology without the contextually invaluable contribution of the comparitive method. Neither of these are a part, at all, of hard sciences (archeology being the gray area exception).

Largely, it's a matter of replicability. If you can, gaurenteed, do the same thing a million times and get the same results, it's hard science. If you can't, it's soft. You need a plethora of great peer reviewed articles to prove ONE point in soft science or be credible in your field (or a world changing book); you need ONE article (with A supporting replicate) in hard science. In this respect, soft science is harder?

 

[Fifty]

nah, i mean there never was a real division between social science as a discipline and empiric work. empiricism (do you say that in english?) was always part of sociology. in fact statistics, data collections, methods of evaluations etc. were the beginnings of sociology as a scientific discipline back in the 18/19th century.

Just doing those things does not make a discipline a science. Science-hood is actually pretty complex. I think using the term "soft science" is misleading (because it makes it sound like "soft" is a species term of science, which it isn't) but what people are talking about when they say "soft science" is usually more-or-less right.

IIRC, you said that math in economics is often used to hide the lack of theoretical advancement. How does math in sociology differ?

Because math-driven sociology tends to actually be put towards areas that are amenable to mathematical analysis (e.g. network theory). In economics, for instance, I'm fine with the high level of math used in financial economics, because the structure there is more amenable to math in general. Also, I kind of just think that pure economists just have no idea how to use math properly. That's why, in finance, a huge chunk of the major theoretical advances have come from mathematicians/physicists/engineers, rather than economists. I remember reading a book by Emmanual Derman (one of the godfathers of modern finance theory) where he went so far as to say that being an economists is usually a strike against, rather than a strike for, a potential employee, even if he had a PhD in economics from a very prestigious school. Similarly, in sociology most of the best work (it seems to me) in math-amenable areas is done by math people, not sociologists. Duncan Watts, for instance, has his PhD in math, and did quite a bit of his work with another mathematician, Steven Strogatz. They don't seem to interact much with "traditional" sociologists.

 

[aneeshm]

Call me a scientistic pimp, but......


The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
Sociobiology, E.O. Wilson



If you want something on the softer side, go for the Sowell trilogy:

Conquests and Cultures
Migrations and Cultures
Race and Culture

 

[Thorbal]

Ahh, methodology. The always scrapped section of a good thesis (the pros can see the bias without you spelling it out).

Participatory? Objective? Hah. There is no participatory method in the hard sciences, nor is there a comparative method. Those methods/methodologies are exclusive to soft science (economics, anthropology, ecology).

Would you claim there is a participatory or comparitive method to physics, math, chemistry (excepting QSAR), or biology (excepting species classification)? They are the foundation of modern anthropology, if nonexistant in hard sciences. Try to study development without Chamber's participatory methodology. Try to study anthropology without the contextually invaluable contribution of the comparitive method. Neither of these are a part, at all, of hard sciences (archeology being the gray area exception).

Largely, it's a matter of replicability. If you can, gaurenteed, do the same thing a million times and get the same results, it's hard science. If you can't, it's soft. You need a plethora of great peer reviewed articles to prove ONE point in soft science or be credible in your field (or a world changing book); you need ONE article (with A supporting replicate) in hard science. In this respect, soft science is harder?

Agreed. It was rather late at the time of my last post and I was quite tired - I was just trying to say that the intersection between the methods in the different fields of science is larger than some people think and that soft sciences are not as random as often perceived - but apparently, I don´t have to tell that to you, I´m a bit aggressive in that regard because of my minority complexes - I don´t like the terms "soft" and "hard" sciences very much... perhaps because some people are using them in a rather discriminatory context over here and elsewhere.