It is customary to divide sciences into two categories, hard and soft sciences - examples of hard sciences are physics and astronomy, while ecology and psychology are often classified as soft sciences.
One group of sciences is also distinguished by strict and rigorous scientific standards, and close attention to formal standards for hypothesis formulation and testing. The other sciences take a much more informal approach, basically taking the view that if it works, use it.
The strict school is of course the one corresponding to, and responsible for, the soft sciences. Physicists and their ilk tend to be guided by the observation of Albert Einstein that Nature is subtle but not malicious ("Raffiniert is der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht"), so they feel justified in using anything they can come up with to unravel the subtleties and ferret out Nature's secrets (Stephen Hawking on the other hand said that "Not only does God play dice with the universe, but sometimes he throws them where they cannot be seen," which justifies even more devious methods of scientific investigation). The strict school will have none of this - what matters is being scientific, not doing science. That is how they keep the soft sciences soft. By setting absurd standards that discourage creative thinking they inhibit our ability to understand the natural world, and thus maintain a sterile respectability.
Speculation is part of science. Research that is not guided by hypothesis testing is the only way to make serendipitous discoveries. For example, who would have dared to hypothesize the existence of deep-sea vent communities fuelled by sulpher-eating bacteria, or funded the research to test such a radical and speculative hypothesis?
Fortunately many scientists pay only lip service to the formal approach, and focus on knowledge, which is the real meaning of "science" (from the Latin root for knowing - in other languages the usage is the same, as with the German "Wissenschaft"). I once attended a lecture by a very severe Professor who had his students analyse 400 papers in the scientific literature, finding that only two of them followed "correct" scientific procedure. This is good news, since it means that 99.5% of scientists (398/400) disagree with him.
Even so, the followers of Karl Popper have an impact and their ability to impede the progress of science should not be underestimated. Whenever a potentially useful principle raises its head in the soft sciences there will be those ready to smack it into the ground, as criticisms of the Competitive Exclusion Principle show.
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