Bridging the two cultures
I
was going to spend this day in typesetting the manuscript of my next
book to fit the scheme of the publisher, but unfortunately I have not
received the style sheet in email. Since I got nothing better to do for
the next three hours, I shall translate and post here some of the
better old posts and observations of Tommi. These are so good that I
don't know why I even bother to write anything on my own any more.
Standing up for useless research
As a sociology student I am puzzled about the constant complaints about the uselessness of social science research. In reality, the biggest problem that prevents social sciences becoming actual sciences is their enormous lack of data. Natural sciences could have never been developed to be as elegant as they are just by sitting in an armchair and tossing around wild hypotheticals and theories. Natural sciences are based on an enormous collection of raw data about what reality is really like. Research in social sciences provides only a very sparse and random picture about the social reality.
A lot more research and data collection should be performed to make social sciences more mature. Since unfortunately this is not the case, many "studies" are based mostly on beliefs and assumptions. Working with beliefs and assumptions (and especially with incomplete statistical data) will generate results that are sexier in media than those that were based on facts.
If I ever got to make decisions of how science is financed, I would lay down a rock-solid principle that for the next 20 years, all social sciences in Finland will concentrate on data collection that does not serve any needs of familiar open social science problems.
But do you know what will save social sciences in near future? Stores and chains currently collect a massive amount of data about the lives and consumption habits of ordinary people. When universities and other similar instances get to access this data once it becomes obsolete for commercial purposes, sociology and its comrades will make a bigger leap forward than their whole progress has been so far during the past 2400 years.
Natural sciences could have never been developed to be as elegant as they are just by sitting in an armchair and tossing around wild hypotheticals and theories.
"Sophisticated" is a better word choice here than "elegant", regardless of whether it was Tommi's own choice or not.
Posted by Anonymous | 3:24 PM
It is pretty much the mark that a scientific discipline has reached maturity that it picks up an associated engineering discipline.
Posted by Anonymous | 9:06 PM