Social Un-Science (A Scientist's view of not-Science) - Part 1

Preamble

This is meant as a sequel to my four part series "On the Practice of Science (A Scientist's view of science)" found  here: Part 1. These blogs mainly address social science but some elements may also relevant to humanities, but since even my friends who study humanities haven't succeeded in explaining to me what exactly humanities are, I'm not really sure.

The Wild-West of Academia


there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.
- Donald Rumsfeld

 These blogs were inspired by my reading of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Whereas he considers the existence of paradigms, generally accepted models within a field which guide experimental design and interpretation of data, to be pathological behaviour which undermine the working of science; I instead explained how paradigms are in fact integral in the ability of science to make progress over time. In contrast to science, social-science and the humanities do not have paradigms which I argue is one of the reasons they do not show the same kind of continuous progress seen in the sciences.

To elucidate this point I will refer to the infamous quote above by Donald Rumsfeld. When applied to academic fields the known-knowns are the generally accepted ideas, observations, or methods in the field, the known-unknowns are the generally acknowledged open questions within the field, and the unknown-unknowns are problems and questions which have not been noticed/acknowledged by people working in the field. In the sciences, there are relatively many known-knowns (summarized as the current paradigm) compared to the known-unknowns. In contrast, there seem to be few if any known-knowns in the social-sciences and humanities, instead there is a plethora of known-unknowns : many interesting questions and situations/materials to study but few generally accepted interpretations or techniques to investigate them.

When this situation is combined with the abscence of an overarching philosophical principle (the Scientific Method) or goal (being able to predict the behavior of the system) it creates a situation analogous to the "Wild West" of the USA. A known large empty, poorly explore space with little guidance or rules about how to settle it. It should come as little surprise that 'gangs' of academics join together forming various "schools of thought" and that relations between them can be down-right hostile.

Not that emerging fields of science or fields undergoing a paradigm shift are much better, but the Scientific Method and accepted primacy of prediction to establish the validity of theories create a path toward the establishment of a new paradigm, restoring order. As far as I can tell in the social sciences and humanities there is no accepted system or principles to determine which ideas are more useful than others or which ideas are incorrect. Thus it becomes impossible to reach consensus and establish a paradigm, letting each new wave of cowboys tear down what was built by the last wave.

Continued in : Part 2