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On May 24 2016 02:37 Ghostcom wrote: Social Science is a Scientific Field. Woman studies is not. It is at best a sub-specialty.
If the statement that "every country is misogynistic" is true, then so is "every country is misandric" as males occupy the extremes when it comes to almost all applicable parameters. Painting with such a broad brush is pretty much useless.
Social sciences are not true science either.
In what way.
Social sciences do not go through the same rigorous testing that hard sciences do. Also, in social sciences you are dealing with unquantifiable data where absolute truth cannot be obtained. Social science will never reach the precision of the hard sciences. 2+2 always equals 4. Social science is more relative.
i hate to get nit-picky here but arithmetic like 2+2=4 and mathematics are not science. they are not rooted in observable reality. Mathematics exists in the human imagination and no where in the real world.
there are no spheres and straight lines in reality. they do not exist.
we can approximate and model certain things in the physical world with the aid of mathematical abstractions. but these are only approximations. sometimes very very close approximations when the model is very good.
if i have 2 apples and then my friend gives me 2 apples i then have 4 apples. that's not math. 2+2=4 is math and its conceptual.. it exists in your mind and no where in reality.
you do not run real world experiments to prove the fundamental theorem of calculus nor do you run any real world experiments to demonstrate whether or not a matrix is orthogonally diagonalizable.
You can accurately predict that something in nature will respond the same way each and everytime.
Is quantum mechanics science?
Yes, we can accurately predict some things on the quantum level. Obviously, there are things we don't know yet and we are still learning. But the process and the end goal is still the same.
Can you accurately (= in a non-probabilistic manner) predict the orbital position of electrons in atoms, given their momentum?
That is probably a GOAL of quantum physics, just like its a goal for the Cubs to win the World Series. We don't know if either is possible, or will happen. In the meantime, we can use quantum physics to predict things, in the past hypothesis in quantum physics have been falsified, and/or been tested without being falsified. Just as the hypothesis that Mark Prior would win the Cubs the World Series has been falsified.
On May 24 2016 02:37 Ghostcom wrote: Social Science is a Scientific Field. Woman studies is not. It is at best a sub-specialty.
If the statement that "every country is misogynistic" is true, then so is "every country is misandric" as males occupy the extremes when it comes to almost all applicable parameters. Painting with such a broad brush is pretty much useless.
Social sciences are not true science either.
In what way.
Social sciences do not go through the same rigorous testing that hard sciences do. Also, in social sciences you are dealing with unquantifiable data where absolute truth cannot be obtained. Social science will never reach the precision of the hard sciences. 2+2 always equals 4. Social science is more relative.
i hate to get nit-picky here but arithmetic like 2+2=4 and mathematics are not science. they are not rooted in observable reality. Mathematics exists in the human imagination and no where in the real world.
there are no spheres and straight lines in reality. they do not exist.
we can approximate and model certain things in the physical world with the aid of mathematical abstractions. but these are only approximations. sometimes very very close approximations when the model is very good.
if i have 2 apples and then my friend gives me 2 apples i then have 4 apples. that's not math. 2+2=4 is math and its conceptual.. it exists in your mind and no where in reality.
you do not run real world experiments to prove the fundamental theorem of calculus nor do you run any real world experiments to demonstrate whether or not a matrix is orthogonally diagonalizable.
You can accurately predict that something in nature will respond the same way each and everytime.
Is quantum mechanics science?
Yes, we can accurately predict some things on the quantum level. Obviously, there are things we don't know yet and we are still learning. But the process and the end goal is still the same.
Can you accurately (= in a non-probabilistic manner) predict the orbital position of electrons in atoms, given their momentum?
On May 24 2016 02:37 Ghostcom wrote: Social Science is a Scientific Field. Woman studies is not. It is at best a sub-specialty.
If the statement that "every country is misogynistic" is true, then so is "every country is misandric" as males occupy the extremes when it comes to almost all applicable parameters. Painting with such a broad brush is pretty much useless.
Social sciences are not true science either.
In what way.
Social sciences do not go through the same rigorous testing that hard sciences do. Also, in social sciences you are dealing with unquantifiable data where absolute truth cannot be obtained. Social science will never reach the precision of the hard sciences. 2+2 always equals 4. Social science is more relative.
i hate to get nit-picky here but arithmetic like 2+2=4 and mathematics are not science. they are not rooted in observable reality. Mathematics exists in the human imagination and no where in the real world.
there are no spheres and straight lines in reality. they do not exist.
we can approximate and model certain things in the physical world with the aid of mathematical abstractions. but these are only approximations. sometimes very very close approximations when the model is very good.
if i have 2 apples and then my friend gives me 2 apples i then have 4 apples. that's not math. 2+2=4 is math and its conceptual.. it exists in your mind and no where in reality.
you do not run real world experiments to prove the fundamental theorem of calculus nor do you run any real world experiments to demonstrate whether or not a matrix is orthogonally diagonalizable.
You can accurately predict that something in nature will respond the same way each and everytime.
Is quantum mechanics science?
Yes, we can accurately predict some things on the quantum level. Obviously, there are things we don't know yet and we are still learning. But the process and the end goal is still the same.
Can you accurately (= in a non-probabilistic manner) predict the orbital position of electrons in atoms, given their momentum?
If you are arguing that there are problems in nature that we cannot solve, you won't find any arguement with me. You're completely missing the point. Yes, we do not have all the answers and there are some things that are currently beyond our comprehension. However, that doesn't mean that those answers are not there, we just do not have the means to access them.
Science is humble and will admit to what we do not know, but the goal is the quest for truth in pure form.
Social science is completely relative as it is often laced in ethics and societal norms. It is fabricated on the construct that we have created for ourselves in our own false reality. The answer can be different based upon different cultural and individual perspective. Hard science is universal, social science is dependent on our own values which have no weight anywhere else but this planet.
Theoretical physics and quantom mechanics are science because they are trying to answer the hard questions about nature and the cosmos that apply universally. No one is presenting theoretical physics as absolute fact, it is the process of trying to discover and understtand the hardest things imaginable.
I am kind of rambling but it is hard to write my thoughts. On this subject onto this smart phone while I'm at work.
On May 24 2016 03:35 Naracs_Duc wrote: Math is the combination of real world observations and philosophical derivations.
for it to become the topic of a mathematician the first thing you do is remove the real world. Your imagination supersedes your observations. Now you may take these results over to your friend the physicist... and say .. "hey man .. this might help model this other thing you are trying to predict". But, that's not math.. that's physics.
solving linear diff eq's has nothing to do with reality... its all in your mind.
you may take the result of the fundamental theorem of calculus and use it in physics. But the steps of its proof are all in your mind and no where in reality. And as soon as you use it in physics it becomes a mere approximation.
Which is why I said its the combination of real world observations and philosophical derivations. It takes real world observations to form its axioms. Once those axioms are set, you then ask the "what if we..." question that is intrinsic to both Philosophy and is the core of all humanities studies. As those new derivations continue to pull you further and further into the abstract, you are certain that you have not strayed too far because you understand exactly how your derivations lead up to that point.
You don't, for example, simply say "Fuck it, the answer is 2 because I say so, math is all in the mind anyway so what the fuck ever." It is all derivations of a core axiom that was built from observable constants.
I was not saying that math is 100% observable, that's silly. But the reason we trust math to work is because its core concepts started from something we observed to be true. There are observable objects, and those objects exist in an observable space. How we perceive, discuss, or quantify those objects is subjective--but the reason we talk about them is because we can observe them in the first place. And the derivations and ideas we get from the explorations of those perceptions, discussions, or quantifications is the reason we have academic study.
i suspect many members of this thread ( including me ) suffer from a debilitating disease for which there is no cure. We can,however, spread awareness.
On May 24 2016 02:37 Ghostcom wrote: Social Science is a Scientific Field. Woman studies is not. It is at best a sub-specialty.
If the statement that "every country is misogynistic" is true, then so is "every country is misandric" as males occupy the extremes when it comes to almost all applicable parameters. Painting with such a broad brush is pretty much useless.
Social sciences are not true science either.
In what way.
Social sciences do not go through the same rigorous testing that hard sciences do. Also, in social sciences you are dealing with unquantifiable data where absolute truth cannot be obtained. Social science will never reach the precision of the hard sciences. 2+2 always equals 4. Social science is more relative.
i hate to get nit-picky here but arithmetic like 2+2=4 and mathematics are not science. they are not rooted in observable reality. Mathematics exists in the human imagination and no where in the real world.
there are no spheres and straight lines in reality. they do not exist.
we can approximate and model certain things in the physical world with the aid of mathematical abstractions. but these are only approximations. sometimes very very close approximations when the model is very good.
if i have 2 apples and then my friend gives me 2 apples i then have 4 apples. that's not math. 2+2=4 is math and its conceptual.. it exists in your mind and no where in reality.
you do not run real world experiments to prove the fundamental theorem of calculus nor do you run any real world experiments to demonstrate whether or not a matrix is orthogonally diagonalizable.
You can accurately predict that something in nature will respond the same way each and everytime.
Is quantum mechanics science?
Yes, we can accurately predict some things on the quantum level. Obviously, there are things we don't know yet and we are still learning. But the process and the end goal is still the same.
Can you accurately (= in a non-probabilistic manner) predict the orbital position of electrons in atoms, given their momentum?
That is probably a GOAL of quantum physics, just like its a goal for the Cubs to win the World Series. We don't know if either is possible, or will happen. In the meantime, we can use quantum physics to predict things, in the past hypothesis in quantum physics have been falsified, and/or been tested without being falsified. Just as the hypothesis that Mark Prior would win the Cubs the World Series has been falsified.
No, it is not. One of the main ideas of QM is that it is simply not possible to measure some things at the same time. Not because we don't have a way to measure them, but because it is fundamentally impossible. For example, it is impossible to know all three of the spatial coordinates of the angular momentum of an electron in a hull at the same time.
Now, it could be that that idea is wrong. But that would mean that we need a bunch of new physics, because that would clearly show that something is fundamentally not working like the real world in QM. So far, we have not been able to find anything along those lines, in fact QM is one of the best tested theories and its results are supremely accurate at describing and predicting weird things.
So if science is only about things that we can 100% predict at every time, then QM would indeed drop out of science, because it states that sometimes we can only talk about probabilities, and not because we can not see it, but because it is impossible to see.
On May 24 2016 02:37 Ghostcom wrote: Social Science is a Scientific Field. Woman studies is not. It is at best a sub-specialty.
If the statement that "every country is misogynistic" is true, then so is "every country is misandric" as males occupy the extremes when it comes to almost all applicable parameters. Painting with such a broad brush is pretty much useless.
This absurdly hilarious to me.
Would you like to elaborate or do you prefer to stay non-contributive?
There is no scientist on this earth who will tell you that an individual data point he has contains 100% accuracy. Any and all scientific statements is the culmination of many data points run through a statistical meat grinder to produce an estimated value that is deemed "close enough" within that field. This is the exact same thing as social science. Its the same methods, its the same practice, and its the same necessary process.
Each data point in both hard and soft science has varying values and it is only in the collection of a enough data points all of which are put under quantitative study that we are able to produce estimations of what the values mean. For the most part, hard sciences are easy because the observed objects are simple, social science has very messy data with lots of confounders but that just means its a more difficult field of study with much higher mathematical needs that hard sciences.
Just so we are all on the same page, here are a short list of fields that are covered by social sciences:
Anthropology Economics Education Geography History Law Linguistics Political science Psychology Sociology
While I will admit that it is weird that law is up there, several of those fields fall under observable and with quantifiable data. If we are going to dive into the science gate keeping, we should really discuss what it being is being barred from being considered a science.
Note: I am not sure how geography is a social science over a regular science, tbh.
Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this.
On May 24 2016 04:16 Naracs_Duc wrote: But the reason we trust math to work is because its core concepts started from something we observed to be true.
proving both requires no lab. you can't prove anything in physics, chemistry or biology without a real world observation. math is all mind games dawg. these proofs contain nothing from the real world.
@cLuTz, @oBlade and @SolaR-, I refer you to Simberto's comment as to why I asking that question. More fundamentally, though, I find that, in order to be productive, a discussion on the differences between social sciences and natural sciences requires the participants to be familiar with various works in epistemology and the philosophy of science, otherwise it's basically a matter of caricatures being discussed. I'll respectfully bow out of this one.
On May 24 2016 04:16 Naracs_Duc wrote: But the reason we trust math to work is because its core concepts started from something we observed to be true.
proving both requires no lab. you can't prove anything in physics, chemistry or biology without a real world observation. math is all mind games dawg. these proofs contain nothing from the real world.
Literally on the first section of your first link: Additionally, it is not fundamental for modern algebra; its name was given at a time when the study of algebra was mainly concerned with the solutions of polynomial equations with real or complex coefficients.
ie, this is not the fundamental theorem of algebra, but simple a way to talk about algebra when discussing how to solve certain types of problems using axioms such as (and this is the link) Order Theory that it laymans terms is merely telling us that the number line exists (or more precisely, that we don't need to see an infinite number of things to understand an infinite number of things).
But this is what I mean by the fact that the axioms of mathematics as a concept start with the observable world. We see things, we see how they relate to each other, and then we translate that into a medium that we can abstract those observable things.
On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote: You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.
Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this.
You have hacked the code of these discussions, that its less about what is a science and more about what they can ignore.
On May 24 2016 02:37 Ghostcom wrote: Social Science is a Scientific Field. Woman studies is not. It is at best a sub-specialty.
If the statement that "every country is misogynistic" is true, then so is "every country is misandric" as males occupy the extremes when it comes to almost all applicable parameters. Painting with such a broad brush is pretty much useless.
This absurdly hilarious to me.
Would you like to elaborate or do you prefer to stay non-contributive?
There is no scientist on this earth who will tell you that an individual data point he has contains 100% accuracy. Any and all scientific statements is the culmination of many data points run through a statistical meat grinder to produce an estimated value that is deemed "close enough" within that field. This is the exact same thing as social science. Its the same methods, its the same practice, and its the same necessary process.
Each data point in both hard and soft science has varying values and it is only in the collection of a enough data points all of which are put under quantitative study that we are able to produce estimations of what the values mean. For the most part, hard sciences are easy because the observed objects are simple, social science has very messy data with lots of confounders but that just means its a more difficult field of study with much higher mathematical needs that hard sciences.
I think you misunderstood my initial post. I disagree with none of what you have written here. I did not pass judgement upon social sciences (which I do consider a science, although a, to my taste, methodologically very unsatisfying one). I remarked that elevating a sub-speciality to be a "Scientific field" was wrong.
On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote: You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.
Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this.
I think the point should be that calling your field a "science" isn't a credential per se. Saying something's not a hard science doesn't necessitate that the field has little to no value or can't produce useful knowledge. That might be true, but it would be for other reasons (reasons that might be related to people wanting to call the field a science as a bid for credibility).
On May 24 2016 04:36 kwizach wrote: @cLuTz, @oBlade and @SolaR-, I refer you to Simberto's comment as to why I asking that question. More fundamentally, though, I find that, in order to be productive, a discussion on the differences between social sciences and natural sciences requires the participants to be familiar with various works in epistemology and the philosophy of science, otherwise it's basically a matter of caricatures being discussed. I'll respectfully bow out of this one.
The thing is electrons (waves) don't have a position that isn't probabilistic. Your question is therefore asking someone to predict something that doesn't exist. It would be like asking a psychologist to measure someone's integer happiness. The main point was that in the scientific method you build an expanding core of knowledge by making predictions you can verify.
On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote: You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.
Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this.
I think the point should be that calling your field a "science" isn't a credential per se. Saying something's not a hard science doesn't necessitate that the field has little to no value or can't produce useful knowledge. That might be true, but it would be for other reasons (reasons that might be related to people wanting to call the field a science as a bid for credibility).
On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote: You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.
Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this.
I think the point should be that calling your field a "science" isn't a credential per se. Saying something's not a hard science doesn't necessitate that the field has little to no value or can't produce useful knowledge. That might be true, but it would be for other reasons (reasons that might be related to people wanting to call the field a science as a bid for credibility).
Exactly, i think this hits the nail on the head.
What does that even mean?
Science is ticking down notes when collecting data points and then analyzing those data points to make a conclusions or predictions. It shouldn't matter if you're watching ducks mate, recording titrations, or listening to people tell you an account of their experience. Data points are data points. To treat one as more than the other and even brining "credibility" of a field into play is completely asinine.
On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote: You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.
Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this.
I think the point should be that calling your field a "science" isn't a credential per se. Saying something's not a hard science doesn't necessitate that the field has little to no value or can't produce useful knowledge. That might be true, but it would be for other reasons (reasons that might be related to people wanting to call the field a science as a bid for credibility).
Exactly, i think this hits the nail on the head.
What does that even mean?
Science is ticking down notes when collecting data points and then analyzing those data points to make a conclusions or predictions. It shouldn't matter if you're watching ducks mate, recording titrations, or listening to people tell you an account of their experience. Data points are data points. To treat one as more than the other and even brining "credibility" of a field into play is completely asinine.
Not really. Science is more about actively testing a theory. Which is not to say you cannot engage in what would be "Social Science"; it is that a qualitative or quantitative look at the work that is currently encompassed within Social Science is not that. Instead it is that generally what is modern Social Science is more of a mixture of confirmation bias and advocacy that uses statistics and math to disguise what is actually going on.
On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote: You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.
Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this.
I think the point should be that calling your field a "science" isn't a credential per se. Saying something's not a hard science doesn't necessitate that the field has little to no value or can't produce useful knowledge. That might be true, but it would be for other reasons (reasons that might be related to people wanting to call the field a science as a bid for credibility).
Exactly, i think this hits the nail on the head.
What does that even mean?
Science is ticking down notes when collecting data points and then analyzing those data points to make a conclusions or predictions. It shouldn't matter if you're watching ducks mate, recording titrations, or listening to people tell you an account of their experience. Data points are data points. To treat one as more than the other and even brining "credibility" of a field into play is completely asinine.
The problem is that in social sciences, it is quite often very hard to control variables and researcher bias. This does not mean that they are fundamentally unviable or not sciences, but it does mean that their results are often a lot less accurate than those of more classical sciences like physics.
As a result, there can often be reasonable skepticism towards the results of the much younger social sciences, which investigate much more complicated problems that are often hard to remove from outside bias.
EPT
