(wait for the poll)

I'm really missing school, by the way. Winter break is boring.

I am planning to study Political Science and English. My roommate is interested in Biology and Chemistry. He argues that Political Science is "not a real science" because it's "subjective". I disagree because while I don't know much of anything about the methodology of Political Science yet, it's pretty much based in the scientific method (although the ability to test through repetition is suspect in Poli Sci). Further, I am not certain that the natural sciences are really objective either.

So the poll question comes to:

What do you call social sciences?

"Soft Sciences" (as opposed to Hard Sciences)
"Complex Sciences" (as opposed to Simple Sciences)
or Fake Science (as opposed to Real Science or some variation)

Soft.

Political Science could be a proper science, but it's based on man-made principles so it's probably not considered a hard science.

Still, at least it's not Computer Science which blatantly isn't a science. Also, Mathematics isn't a science either.

I didn't even know they categorized a science besides "social" and "natural".

natural is things like geography, geology and areas of 'normal' science. social is things like sociology, certain areas of what can fall under geography and other such confusing things

Oh, and FAKE

It's a real science. It's just not a natural one.

Man-made, so fake.

Can't beat this either.

Thanks FGR, that just gave my brother, who was standing next to me, an epileptic attack.

I'm a political science major. I voted for "fake science" because that's how I usually self-deprecatingly refer to it, but that's not actually what I think.

Social sciences do use a scientific methodology; they're also not "subjective" as your roommate claims. Claims in social science can be proven and disproven. Sometimes you have to go with the explanation that seems the most likely because there's no conclusive evidence, but this happens sometimes in the natural sciences too.

The subjectivity isn't in social science, it's in what social science is studying; that is, human behavior, which is subjectively determined.

Sorry to hear that...

...apparently my links have become dangerous. :|

I'm a poli sci major and I have to say either Complex or Soft. It's not a fake science as researchers perform empirical tests and create models to explain observable phenomena just like 'real' science.

I think it's more that people who study 'real' science are upset because they get ****ed by math and lab requirements and social science is mostly reading and data collection.

um, i'd take maths and labs over data collection any day. data collection is so incredibly dull

I voted "complex" because I'm not sure what you meant by "complex" or "simple" science. I'll just say it's science.

Just a term I picked up from Wikipedia and liked:

I would have to agree with that.

Well "science" itself is man made, so is all science fake?

I sure hope you know what he meant, but i'll assume you didn't.

The natural sciences are based on formulating scientific models that predict certain behaviour and then looking for ways to break the model using experiments and data. What you are trying to model are things that only work in one way (let's not get into the random nature of quantum-level physics right now). Physics, Biology, Chemistry etc aren't man-made, they'll be quite happy to go on doing what they do whether we decide to observe and understand them or not.

Social sciences are based on things that aren't just based on physical laws (unless you get right down to the Theory of Everything and build a computer bigger than the universe to calculate the future with 100% accuracy). They deal with things like social order, how societies evolve, political change, economies, business, things that can be modelled reasonably well but ultimately contain a big random factor. Game theory is built on the notion that you can maximise your winnings by predicting the way the opponent will try maximise theirs. If both players have an equal mastery of game theory the outcome is 100% predictable, but throw in a bit of gambling and bluffing and it becomes much less predictable. If everyone behaved logically social sciences would be a lot like natural sciences, but people rarely behave logically and it usually just takes one to do things differently to make things much harder to model. Take man out of the equation and all social sciences go away (unless there are aliens :p).

But the study of each is obviously "man-made"

Science is a collection of theories to try to explain things, and one could argue (and most would agree, correctly so) that these theories are man made.

As we all know science doesn't "prove" things, just tries to explain things.

So science (the attempt to explain certain things in a certain way) is man made, which was my point

It seems obvious enough that FGR was saying that the subject of study was man-made and therefore a fake science.

which i disagree with.

But to say "fake science" makes no sense whatsoever.



You could show how a theory doesn't work, but science never "proves" anything.

In PoliSci for example, there is "Elite Theory" and "Group/Pluralist Theory".

Neither can really be proven or disproven (otherwise it wouldn't be scientific) but one could help explain things better than the other and be more accurate.

This is the same with natural sciences. Gravity isn't unfalsifiable, and can be "disproven" and isn't 100% true, because it is a scientific explanation for it, so it simply helps explain why **** falls down, and scientists are pretty sure that it is right. (I think that Einstein's theory or relativity came up with a different explanation if I'm not mistaken, but I don't know much about that subject)

Um, wanna rephrase that? Falsifiability is a pretty big part of science...