
Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012) - danielalmeida
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/humanities-arent-a-science-stop-treating-them-like-one/
======
mihaaly
The story reminds me of the HR practices of 'measuring' personality based on
questionnaire to judge the competence of people for certain positions and
determine their carrier path inside the organization (e.g. at Trimble).
Imagine you are a software engineer applying for an engineering role and they
ask you a hundred or more questions to compare the importance of aspects such
as punctuality, trust, being patient, lawfulness, honesty and several more, 3
at a time, make a strict order of importance. Without specifics on the work
context and situation. Then they build a multi dozen component report how good
you are in this and that on a 1 to 5 scale. The way you work. Based on answers
to strange questions, not actual work. When it is impossible to answer
accurately (because it depends, or there is no order like between playing
piano or being tall) then the results will be inaccurate, yet they use it to
classify workforce like steel by its properties, determining their fate.
Assessing work performance before doing any work. And they take it dead
seriously like gauge on a pressure tank. It is just so ... well dumb, forcing
any kind of oversimplified measurement on complex and fluid things, sounds
like measuring friendliness by meter. People change, people adapt, people
behave differently in different circumstances, very very differently, and
definitely not how they admit it, no one can count how many influential
factors there are, these robotic and unified approaches are just distorting
for the purpose of appearing fair. It is far from fair, it is just robotic -
which is ironic from a department called human resources, feels like robots
work there not humans. Measuring fish by how high it can jump before allowing
to swim.

It is just pretentious not scientific.

~~~
koonsolo
If you ever need to take such a test, get yourself in the mindset of "I am a
loyal, hard working person", and good results will flow from that one. Just
think what kind of employee a company wants to have.

It's easier to fill it out on a test than actually be hard working for a
couple of years, so the test is the easy part ;).

~~~
mihaaly
My point is more like that it is the best not to be involved with
organizations employing such evaluation practices towards their people.

Despite the technical interviews went very well I've quit the recruitment
process when faced this mandatory step. I choose not to take those tests.
Previous experiences show that where such mechanistic approach is in place
those places are not worth working for. I tried to discuss around this kind of
test, asking for reasons and proposing substitutes with more position relevant
ones, but no, rigid refusal was the answer in polite wrapping. Actually they
required two kinds of tests, one personality and one generic ability that
included one third - ca. 6 questions - of calculating percentages and sum
values quickly, in a financial context. Basically adding and multiplying
numbers very quickly. Irrelevant but the results are taken into account
seriously.

------
cycomanic
This is such a horrible article. Many have already mentioned the conflation of
humanities and social sciences. Then by using the example of books (because
most would agree books would loose their essence if we just describe them by
numbers) it constructs a straw man that somehow we loose something (the
beauty?) by using quantitative measures.

Sure many studies have flaws (not just in the social sciences), but what is
the alternative that we simply use theories because of their "beauty"
(whatever that means)? Shall we start psychological therapies just because
someone thought it sounded good, instead of measuring if it works?

~~~
tw000001
> conflation of humanities and social sciences.

You've missed the entire point. A sort of conflation _is_ the problem - not by
the author, but by people in and around soft sciences _and_ humanities
throwing a bit of statistical jazz into their papers and then drawing
ostensibly rigorous conclusions which influence social policy.

The reality is that by their vary nature, both soft science and humanities
(there is a lot of overlap) _cannot_ be held to the same rigor as, say,
mathematics, physics, chemistry. These sciences are pure theory (like gender
studies), non experimental (like psychology), and fundamentally unfalsifiable
in the majority of cases...but laymen, and apparently government officials,
either don't understand or pretend they don't understand - either way shitty
policy and legislation is passed and innocent people (society) are worse off
frequently.

~~~
barking
This is 2020 and while in the past _attitudeX_ or _behaviourY_ might have been
acceptable we have now come to understand (through Social Science Studies or
NY Times bestseller that a particular academic has written) that both are
wrong, toxic, in fact.

~~~
partyboat1586
>This is 2020

>attitudeX

>NY Times bestseller

>Toxic

Please address the issues directly and name your sources rather than just
giving a general progressive word salad. I'm ready to support you but you
don't convert people by brushing them off as out of date.

------
nurettin
Articles and generally ideas like this always seem too dismissive. CPUs are
nothing like brains because: intricacies. Algorithms can't be applied to
literature because: intricacies. It is almost an appeal to emotions to say
that rather than saying "ok well we tried to apply these electric constructs
and algorithms in order to understand ideas and literature better, we got
nowhere and here's exactly why", they are like "it can't be applied oh no it
can't our humanity is so distinct and precious there are some lines not to be
crossed and here's a million contrived examples as to why".

And to this approach I say, ignorant and cowardly.

~~~
akiselev
I'd hesitate to even call them intricacies. Billions of years of evolution in
biochemistry and multicellular organisms, half a billion years in nervous
systems, and over 200 million years in mammalian brains have culminated with
about 50 million years of evolution of the primate brain. For every human
being that has ever lived, nature has run 10^X continuous brute force
"simulations" to arrive at our present civilization, where X is a ridiculously
high number that's impossible to even estimate.

Sure, our intelligence allows us to skip a lot of those processes just like it
allowed us to escape our gravity well and explore our solar system, but the
jump from CPU to brain is like the jump from moon landing to intergalactic
travel. The discrete nature of digital electronics alone prevents them from
matching neurons because of sampling, let alone their lack of architectural
(i.e. neural) plasticity. It's like trying to weld with a q-tip.

~~~
todorus
That makes it sound all very daunting, but we have a few advantages over
nature when it comes to design.

* A single life can produce multiple iterations of a technology. * Current technology speeds up the development of the next iteration.

~~~
dogma1138
Nature isn’t limited to intentional design tho, I’m not sure what advantage we
have when you have a few 1000’s of people trying to progress technology over
their life time vs about 7 billion iterations which are governed by natural
selection and that is if you only account for a single species.

Also don’t forget that a single life can also produce multiple iterations of
itself over its life span.

Designs are limited by what we understand and can imagine as well as other
constraints, nature not so much.

------
Gimpei
This conflates social science with the humanities. I agree with respect to the
humanities. Less so with respect to social science. People in large groups do
in general follow certain trends and we do have decent ways of establishing
causation. Now there is a lot of stuff that people do that we can't analyze
quantitatively due to lack of data or other blockers. For these qualitative
methods will have to do. Fine, but then we should accept that the conclusions
from qualitative analysis are less firm and judge them accordingly.

~~~
earthboundkid
When you describe continental drift, it doesn’t make the plates go faster.
When you do economics, it changes the economy. Social sciences have a worse
reflexivity problem than the arts, because with art, nothing turns on whether
it’s right or wrong. With social sciences, if your hypothesis is wrong but
widely believed, you can still kick off seventy years of communism.

~~~
roenxi
Yes and no. There are large amount of economics where the describing what is
going on doesn't change the outcome.

Eg, a free market puts tremendous downwards pressure on profit margins.
Identifying that means the powers that be fight against free markets with hook
and crook - but it doesn't change the fact that if there is a free market it
will find an equilibrium where people are indifferent to starting a new
business.

~~~
earthboundkid
The last forty years has been shaped by neoliberalism, which is exactly based
on the idea of free markets as self-correcting. You’re so blinded by it that
you’re just assuming that the theory is correct, so therefore the theory can’t
have an effect!

A) empirically, that was wrong and disastrously so (not as bad as communism
but very bad) B) assuming reflexivity can’t exist is silly even within the
neoliberal framework. It’s like assuming that the dollar bill you see on the
sidewalk must be fake because it’s there.

~~~
pdonis
_> The last forty years has been shaped by neoliberalism, which is exactly
based on the idea of free markets as self-correcting._

This is not only wrong, it's laughable. Governmental interference in the
economy has grown over the last forty years, not shrunk. And not with good
outcomes, either: the crash of 2008-2009 was due to too much government
meddling over a period of decades finally catching up with everyone.

~~~
progre
> the crash of 2008-2009 was due to too much government meddling

I thought it was because of irresponsible speculation in dubious securities
backed by by corrupt rating houses?

~~~
pdonis
Irresponsible speculation in dubious securities by investment banks who knew
the government would bail them out (or bail out the insurance companies
underwriting their risk, which comes to the same thing) because they were "too
big to fail".

And the dubious securities themselves were derivatives based on the housing
market, which was in a huge bubble caused by government policies that
basically forced banks to lend to people who couldn't afford the loans in
order to encourage home ownership, as antepodius pointed out.

------
torrance
I would add to this list economics.

Oxford Economist Kate Raeworth has made the exact same argument about her own
discipline and the allure of the ‘hardness’ of maths and physics. The way
early 20th century increasingly turned to Newtonian-like mechanistic
descriptions of economic processes, reductionist and absurd ideas about ‘human
nature’, and extracting Universal laws from historical and accidental
correlations.

I do recommend reading the first half of her Doughnut Economics where she
makes this case at length, from someone inside the discipline.

~~~
selectionbias
I admit I haven't read or even heard of Kate Raeworth, but I am an academic
economist. Most modern economic research is empirical, a paper poses a policy-
relevant empirical question 'did policy X reduce unemployment' and then
empirical evidence is presented (perhaps using data from a randomly controlled
trial or using quasi-experimental variation). The statistics are calculated
and the assumptions required for the validity of the statistical analysis
discussed critically and at great length. Undergraduate econ classes
unfortunately leave students with the impression that academic econ is mostly
unrealistic theoretical models of behavior, but those models are just handy
tools for hypothesis formation, and it is the empirical testing of hypotheses
that makes a discipline a science, not the manner by which those hypotheses
were formed.

~~~
kunfuu
Hypothesis driven research disregarding rigoriousness of hypothesis formation
is most often flawed, as the hypotheses will be filled with suspicious/flawed
concepts that cannot serve as reliable and meaningful abstraction of reality.

Consider the measures prefixed with 'real', for example, 'real wage'. The
concept of 'real wage' isn't meaningless, since it captures the relation
between wage and purchasing power when inflation is involved. But what about
cases where inflation is not involved, or cases where we need to consider
interactions between some other factors and inflation? In those cases, the
concept of 'real wage' is often impedimental and misleading, a ratio
indicating purchasing power would surely be a better choice.

Consider the concept of 'equilibrium'. I can hardly see any empirical
foundation of 'equilibrium' when it's invoked by empirical economics research.
There are stationary periods of prices. But it's a different story to
interpret such stationariness as a state of equilibrium with a mysterious
process forcing prices to always gravitate to this state. This interpretation
is without empirical foundation and yet its reliability is often assumed a
priori in the research.

If you are not persuaded, it's okay. Regardless, I don't believe hypothesis
formation is irrelevant.

EDIT: On second thought, my case against 'real wage' above was missing the
key. The key is that purchasing power is what matters, and the purchasing
power (most of the time local) of stock variables (e.g. savings) is what
matters. To adjust flow variables by inflation is often misleading.

~~~
selectionbias
Well, at the very least, the argument over hypothesis formation is not
specific to economics. The philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that
science should aim to empirically falsify hypotheses, and that the way
scientists develop those hypotheses, while an interesting psychological
question, is irrelevant for the scientific method. He argued that hypothesis
formation always contains an element of irrationality and instinct and he
quotes Einstein who expressed views to that effect.

------
Daub
My father (a physicist) used to quote Rutherford to me: "all science Is either
physics or stamp collecting". An extreme position perhaps. I now work in a
college of humanities and have frequently collaborated with engineers. I have
seen first hand how poorly applied scientific thinking has become within the
humanities. But I cannot blame them. They are only giving to the uni what has
been asked of them.

The untold reason why humanities now self-describes as 'social science' goes
back to Thatcher years in the UK. She was the first to link university funding
(and tenure) to research output. Research output was in turn defined by ranked
publication and patents. This worked ok-ish in the sciences, but not so well
in the arts. The humanities were obliged to ape the sciences in the way they
spoke, the way they defined their outcomes and the functions they served. The
scientific method is simply not a good fit for the arts.

~~~
konfekt
In the UK Thatcher might have been a driving force. In Western thinking
(entering a rabbit hole) conceiving humanities as sciences is a recurrent
theme (say, in the Scepticism of Hume) that Auguste Comte in the 19th century
turned into the doctrine of positivism:

\- The scientific method (and precision of mathematics) applies to all
sciences, social and natural.

\- Knowledge can be proved only by observation trough empiric means and
deductive reasoning.

------
crazygringo
This is a _terrible_ article.

First of all, the introduction which bashes the paper which applying social
network techniques to fiction? If the author had bothered to look it up, they
would have realized the authors are an applied mathematician and theoretical
physicist. _Not humanities_.

Then they goes on to criticize political science and psychology as their
poster children for the humanities, except these are _social sciences_ , and
only "humanities" in a very broad umbrella term. "Humanities" is more often
used to refer to disciplines such as history, art, literature. So a complete
mix-up of fields.

Third, the assumption that social sciences has a "reliance, insistence, even,
on increasingly fancy statistics and data sets to prove any given point" is
simply flat-out wrong. For example, of course political science relies on
"big-N" studies which try to find or refute correlations between democracy and
various other country indicators. But political science also relies heavily on
"comparative politics" which is much closer to literature or history in a
classic "compare and contrast" aspects of two countries. Similarly psychology
has many different approaches taken in published papers and books, some
quantitative and others more qualitative.

I could go on and on. But this article is completely ridiculous, arguing
against a straw man that simply doesn't exist. It's like the author isn't even
familiar with academia. Bizarre.

~~~
sytelus
I call these hard science vs soft science. Please do not get me wrong, I
shuffle from math and art quite a bit these days and get to take a look at
various approaches in both areas. There is a trend of applying hard science
approach to soft science. This is good thing until it results in research that
is quite wishy washy. When you see "study" where experiment is mainly
surveying people, its soft science. Unfortunately such soft science gets a lot
of press. When you see articles like "Coffee found to reduce cancer by
researchers in a study", you are reading soft science. A huge problem is that
people doing hard as well as soft science are referred to as "researchers" or
"scientists" and both of their works referred to as "science". But its quite
not. Science demands not only evidence but _understanding_. If coffee was
found to reduce cancer, can you elaborate exact mechanism? If you can't then
science requires not to make such claims. Doing survey of graduate students is
not sufficient. That's the nature of hard science which soft science
(including economics) violets too often. Media needs to be more aware
otherwise the trust in science that has been developed over centuries will no
longer be there.

~~~
kissickas
You had me for a second with the survey comment, but we don't know the
mechanism for a lot of biology and that doesn't mean it's not a science. In
fact, we didn't understand most of the things we take for granted today but
that doesn't mean there were no scientists until Newton came along (or any
other arbitrary point of "understanding").

~~~
leeoniya
i think the monimum bar for something to be science is that it has to have a
rigor to it which can be used for removing doubt:

\- hypothesis

\- control group

\- well chosen or random samples from representative population

\- statistical significance

\- a way to separate correlation from causation

\- enumeration of conflating factors and potential for flaws in the chosen
methodology

\- list of prior studies or research

\- peer review

\- reproducibility, possibly using alternative methods

until all of this is done, a survey (or any study) is not science. convincing
the layman is insufficient; you have to convince other experts in the field.

~~~
sytelus
In a way, science is a process of creating a _model_. To create a model, you
first need evidence (i.e. data) and then you form hypothesis which your
proposed model. Then you make prediction using your model that wasn't known
before. If predictions continues to remain true over time then you have
_higher_ confidence in your model. However, a true scientist would never set
his/her confidence to 1.0 in any model because all models are eventually wrong
and needs to be improved further. So the science is the process of
continuously gathering evidence, improving model and remain skeptical that you
might be wrong. It is very much like training a machine learned model using
training data. Most soft sciences do the first two steps and bypass everything
else. It's like you created ML model, you had good result on training data but
you never tested your model on hold out set, assumed your model was good
enough and just moved on to make a press release.

------
mmhsieh
One of the most valuable courses I took as an undergrad was an anthropology
course. In it, we studied the life of JR Oppenheimer and his relationship with
the government patrons of his science.

The sort of scoundrels naturally attracted to power will always find cynical
use for talent of the kind possessed by Oppenheimer. However, every aspect of
such a relationship will be thoroughly cynical.

If you are a future STEM person, understanding this fact will save you a lot
of grief. Learn it early.

~~~
wrnr
Was it beyond Oppenheimer's intellect and imagination to comprehend what he
was doing? Sort of like nazi Germany having no idea what was happening to the
jews?

------
hliyan
Perhaps the currency of social sciences should be _anecdotes_ with full
context (of which you can obviously get only a limited number unless you have
unlimited budget) rather than collecting extensive data points on a limited
number of variables. While physical systems can be approximated (or some
independent variables dropped) without affecting the aspect being studied
(think perfectly spherical objects), when it comes to humans, there are no
independent variables. Approximation or simplified models are much harder.

I think looking for statistical patterns (e.g. in literature) is perfectly
good science as long as you are cognizant that patterns merely invite more
study an should not be used to reach conclusions, also being aware that
patterns might disappear when you expand your data set.

Finally, as someone trained in the physical sciences, I used to look down on
social scientists. I no longer do this. At least they're brave enough to
tackle a complex monster with the limited tools at their disposal, stumbling
and even enduring ridicule from the hard sciences. We ignore the human mind
and collections thereof, because it's too complex and prefer the relative
comfort of simple, predictable systems. I don't believe that's good.

~~~
0d9eooo
As someone in the behavioral/population sciences, I think there's an
underlying, interesting question of "when, if ever, should quantitative
methods not be applied to an area of empirical inquiry?" The article doesn't
seem to address this though.

As for the social and behavioral sciences, another way of approaching it is:
if you have a phenomenon, is it better to try to be scientific in explaining
it or not? If not, you cede that realm to the nonscientific, with all that
implies. If you do approach it scientifically, how do you do that? If your
explanation or theory involves some quantity of some sort, shouldn't you then
attempt to specify a model of it, and test it against observations?

~~~
naasking
Most science seeks broad principles, but I kind of like the OP's suggestion
that a depth-focused approach of detailed anecdotes, possibly from multiple
different points of view, could provide an interesting form of alternate data.

------
rnikander
Some people submitted nonsense papers (for example: rape culture at dog parks,
and an excerpt from Mein Kampf), and they were accepted for publication.

[https://www.timesofisrael.com/duped-academic-journal-
publish...](https://www.timesofisrael.com/duped-academic-journal-publishes-
rewrite-of-mein-kampf-as-feminist-manifesto/)

~~~
nemo44x
They have a book coming out soon titled “Cynical Race Theory” which is a
critique of the 40 years of academic thought that has gone from fringe to
mainstream (And applied like the Inquisition mashed up with Maoist techniques
like Struggle Sessions) and we are seeing played out unwittingly by the media,
tech companies, and the tokenizing social media chatter class.

~~~
noema
Looked this up and saw the promos. Anything endorsed by both Steven Pinker and
Alan Sokal is bound to be bad faith, intellectually dishonest hackery.

~~~
nemo44x
Perhaps. The authors, however, are respectable in the time I’ve read their
blogs, tweets, etc. Guided by liberal principals and have expressed a
generally good understanding of philosophy going back to the Greeks.

------
gumby
The first paper she studies sounds interesting. Regression analysis on
vocabulary has been used to identify authors of work whose authorship had been
lost or to find context of where and in what circumstances certain authors
grew up.

Mathematical analysis of linguistics has pointed to. Irrational patterns later
confirmed by genetic analysis.

I don’t mind pointing out the vacuity of what often passes for scholarship.
But she didn’t start with a good example.

------
Koffiepoeder
I think one of the points that the article tries to make, is the point that
proving something in a soft science using models is often based on many
assumptions, be it implicit or explicit, and that this is problematic. To that
I agree to some degree.

In hard sciences all inputs to a proof are either verifiable theorems known to
be absolutely true, conjectures/hypotheses (in which case the proof becones a
conjecture) and seldomly axioms. In soft sciences on the other hand, it is
common to construct models quite arbitrarily, in order to try and match
empirical results. If however, we would like these models to have any
indication of "absolute" truth, similar to the hard sciences, currently we
can't or don't.

To achieve this I believe we could do an input analysis of ALL assumptions and
try and quantify the aggregated certainty of the model's correctness, even
before matching it with empirical data. In this way we could say for example:
we have used a model with a predicted input accuracy of 0.82, that matches our
empirical results 0.97,p < 0.05. This would then further strengthen and
quantify the "standing on the shoulders of a giant" principle.

Of course this is easier said than done and I know this is a bit naïve.
Currently no techniques exist to do this as far as I know. There is also
discussion to be had about how to interpret model outputs (we now have three
variables, how do we relate them? How to calculate this model's output
accuracy?) and how to calculate subsequent model's accuracy based on different
input accuracies and their inter-relations. This would also require re-
building soft sciences all the way from the bottom up (from the most easily
verifiable facts first) to be useful and a new science on hypthesized model
accuracy calculation.

Anyway, enough hypothesizing thought experiments for the day. Any thoughts?

------
abathur
Kinda funny, I guess.

This is one of those instances where I might care about the case Konnikova was
making if she bothered using any quantitative methods to convince me the
humanities were awash in quantitative study while qualitative analysis clearly
went the way of the dodo. Or that literature programs were churning out
students who think network analysis is the best way to understand a text.

In the purely-qualitative realm, it just comes off as pearl-clutching over
something I don't think anyone actually believes?

------
yk
I fully agree with the premise that humanities aren't a science. In fact I am
fairly certain that the current paradigm of science can not work for at least
history, though I strongly suspect most of the humanities.

One of the problems is computability, when I try to build statistics on a
space of human intentions, then I strongly suspect that this is at least as
complicated as trying to build a measurable space atop the set of all Turing
machines, and there I get immediately the issue of computability. (For
example, calculating the average run time of halting Turing machines.) So,
then assuming that one can meaningful build a statistic (just the claim that
this is possible) will doom any too formal reasoning, by principle of
explosion.

~~~
shash
I disagree entirely, especially about history. You form hypotheses on the
basis of evidence (literary, archaeological, documentary, etc), make
predictions about the kinds of effects you’d expect to find in the historical
record, and then modify those hypotheses based on what you find later.

How is that not a science?

~~~
yk
> make predictions about the kinds of effects you’d expect to find in the
> historical record,

You want to make predictions about the past?

~~~
shash
No, predictions about what other undiscovered evidence you’d expect to find
about the past. In a way this is like astrophysics in that you can’t conduct
experiments, but you can predict that X is correlated with Y. Come to think of
it, paleontology...

For example, take the Shakespeare authorship controversy; you could create a
hypothesis that say “Shakespeare was indeed the author of Hamlet”. A
prediction from this might be, “if a manuscript of Hamlet were ever found it
would be in Shakespeare’s handwriting”. Not a really good example to be sure,
but just off the top of my head...

------
naushniki
I think anything can be a subject to scientific study. Methods are what is
essential for a study being scientific, not the subject.

~~~
doukdouk
Can mathematics be a subject of scientific study? Should axioms and proofs be
replaced by empirical evidence?

------
AnimalMuppet
The article is talking, essentially, to the humanities. But the point applies
to those of us on the outside as well. We as well need to stop expecting the
humanities to be science.

------
maweki
Provocative title. The author argues - more or less - that quantitative and
mathematical approaches do not lend themselves to questions of the humanities
or social sciences.

As an example they take a network analysis that was done on social relations
of characters of fictional works. While the author finds this use dubious, I
think it's the contrary. While the researchers might not fully understand the
methods, they could very well have a mathematician on hand. What do we do in
math if not model real problems of real people?

It might be nice for some people to not know an application of their research
but for humanities to find novel ways in which to use mathematical tools is
great and should be encouraged. Of course they will miss but they will also
hit. We need a peer review where those methods are understood within the
humanities and social sciences, in order to not draw false conclusions.

Of course, qualitative analysis isn't going the way of the dodo and the author
agrees on that.

I just think the occasional misuse of mathematical models for humanities
research is well worth the possible gain. Those problems should follow some
rules with a mathematical models, right??? Let's help those researchers
instead of banishing them to qualitative methods.

~~~
tropdrop
I don't think the author is arguing for a banishment of certain authors "to
qualitative methods." The problem described in the article is one I frequently
see in Silicon Valley - ok, a couple of engineers build a thing. Note how they
didn't start from asking "what is a real problem?" No, they built some
tool/app. Now they spend several investment cycles trying to find "product
market fit" by attempting to find some place in the market where that thing
solves a real problem. This very rarely works as a business strategy - you
first need to find a _real problem_ and then build a tool that solves that
problem.

Problem -> so what? (we build a solution) -> real business.

Now, replace "app" with "mathematical modeling," and you'll start to feel the
author's gripe.

I do think the author is right to ask - what is the point? So what? What are
you trying to do with those mathematical models? What problem are you solving?
For instance, we have the hypothesis that the researchers of the British paper
posited:

> the relative likelihood that certain stories are originally based in real-
> world events

Based on:

>looking at the (very complicated) mathematics of social networks

So, we have a tool - that tool is looking at the mathematics of social
networks. Does high fidelity between models of social networks predict
"realness?" Does a certain model of a social network described in the
relationships of protagonists in a book suggest that book's events are
accurate historical ones?

No, right? Then why is that step glossed over when the researchers go ahead
and start modeling anyway?

~~~
cycomanic
The laser was famously named "a solution looking for a problem", many times in
science we build theories/experiments/devices without solving a problem, but
instead found many problems in hindsight where the theory could be applied
(and many others where it could)

So I see science at work, nothing to see here.

------
m0zg
Science implies the use of the scientific method. Scientific method implies
falsifiable hypotheses. Anything that is not falsifiable isn't a science.

------
KhoomeiK
Elegant conclusions can totally be arrived at in the humanities, it's just
that statistical methods often aren't the best way to go about doing so. The
traditional method of logical proof, which is valued just as much as data
analysis in science, used to be the standard in the humanities. The human mind
would compute the statistics more or less subconsciously, but would then use
those empirical results to say something valuable through a process of logical
induction. I think that's the key point that this article misses—it isn't that
we don't want humanities to provide rational insight, it's that we want
humanities to reduce its reliance on statistics and refocus on what it's
historically been great at.

There's something important to be said here about the duality between logic
and math, algebra and statistics, classical AI and modern DL, philosophy and
science, rationalism and empiricism.

------
vavooom
I would encourage those interested in the intersection of STEM and the
Humanities to check out the Digital Humanities Minor/ Major being offered at a
growing number of universities. I earned the minor at UCLA, and found the
application of digital tools to historical and modern "humanities" focused
types questions to be incredibly relevant.

Examples include: 3D modeling of the historic broadway district in Los
Angeles, Natural Language Processing of ancient Roman texts, virtual reality's
impact on human cognition, etc.

------
wrnr
Say i agree with the sentiment expressed here, what does the curriculum of a
neo-classical humanities look like. Let's presume you'd want to keep the good
stuff, things like Arrow's impossibilities theorem, Bayesian statistics,
Network theory, Language pragmatics, ect. You know the sort of stuff that
might aid the organisation of complex systems without repeating the mistakes
of the past.

Maybe it is unfair to judge the hole field on a silly paper, in all fairness
they write about non existing geometries in physics

------
cm2012
Can you create a hypothesis and then falsify it? Then it's science.

Polls are really useful + accurate and are one of my favorite examples of
stuff that came from social science research.

------
ukj
Humanities may not be a science, but being human sure is empirical.

Experience is all we have.

At the bottom of all of these bouts is then “demarcation problem”. What is a
science, what isn’t a science?

I prefer Paul Fayerabend’s view: if it is useful To somebody somewhere - it is
a science.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_anarchism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_anarchism)

------
pwdisswordfish2
Some people do not consider mathematics to be a science. They veiw it as a
tool used in science, e.g., statitics.

------
timwaagh
On the one hand I completely agree that a lot of scientists across disciplines
have too much confidence in the predictions of their models of complex
systems. For example climate models predicting not only how much global
temperature will rise but also on the local level, which seems far harder to
predict. And the amount of studies that do not survive a replication attempt.
But I don't believe that we can justify wasting tax money on people who don't
try to back up their claims and instead just make up hypothesis after
hypothesis, maybe based on a patient they knew, debating and sipping wine with
their fellow intellectuals, prescribing morality under the guise of science
and just laughing at us plebs. If you want to do that, become a writer or
YouTuber, but not a scientist of any kind. If you're going to be a scientist
at the very least try to back everything up with statistics. I know, It's
work, it's not fun and it might not mean very much but you owe it to society
to dig in and crunch those numbers.

------
timkam
I know it's just an example in the article, but the study about real-life
likeness of social networks in fiction literature seems to miss a point.
Wouldn't a good writer in many cases abstract away some of the complexity of
real-life social networks?

------
29athrowaway
You can analyze a book by saying it has certain number of pages, each one with
certain amount of paper and ink, and you can use that to determine the
chemical composition of the paper and the ink.

That will not tell you what the book is about, though.

------
devin
One of the dumbest faux-scholarly articles I've read in awhile.

------
jessriedel
It's probably fine for there to be a study of history that is not a science,
but there should also be a study of history that does apply scientific
methods.

------
aww_dang
Scientism is the main pillar supporting technocratic management and central
planning of society. This is most apparent to me in economics.

------
take_a_breath
Economics-hating HN is the most fascinating HN.

------
LoSboccacc
how not to solve the repeatability crisis in social sciences: conflate it with
humanities and claim using data to prove things misses the points

how to solve the repeatability crisis in social sciences: throw out bogus
research and get rid of quacks

~~~
ed25519FUUU
Good idea, but you can’t throw out the quacks because their chairing the
departments. You won’t make much progress until you start throwing out the
schools.

------
supernova87a
Makes me think of the joke on "Big Bang Theory" (which am almost ashamed to
admit enjoying):

Caricatured dumb humanities major: "That's what I love about math, there's no
one right answer!"

~~~
naushniki
The most funny part is that this is effectively true.

~~~
cycomanic
Well math is not a science either. I acknowledge that there is debate about if
formal sciences (logic, math, theoretical CS) are a science, but I'm with
Popper in saying that the core of a science is falsifiability which does not
apply to math.

------
brutualchaos
(2012)

~~~
igravious
+1 @dang

------
fasteddie31003
If you can do a double-blind controlled study, it's a science.

~~~
BeetleB
> If you can do a double-blind controlled study, it's a science.

You've just disqualified much of physics research today :-)

~~~
paulcole
They didn’t say that if you can’t do a double-blind controlled study, it’s not
a science.

------
modzu
science = hypothesis; prediction; test prediction; observe. thats it. so a lot
of "science" actually isnt science either...

------
guerrilla
"Psychology is not a natural science." I used to think this and to a certain
extent I still do but the fact is that the feild has changed and become much
more reproducible as time passes and it matures.

More importantly though this article conflates humanities with social sciences
pretty badly. This is quite insulting to sociology and even more so to
economics and anthropology. Physical antrho is pretty serious science.

There are limitations to social sciences but those are not the same
limitations of literary criticism.

~~~
neonate
Psychology hasn't simply become more reproducible. It has been gutted by a
reproducibility crisis and it remains to be seen what the outcome will be.

~~~
0d9eooo
The reproducibility crisis extends far beyond psychology. Psychologists are
the messengers, just like they were with meta-analysis in the 60s and 70s.

Similar problems have been demonstrated in a host of fields, mostly the
biomedical sciences. To take one prominent example, HN has been plastered with
articles about COVID studies of dubious quality.

~~~
neonate
I agree.

------
ltbarcly3
I'm going to sum up half the HN comments here without reading them: "This
isn't good, humanities are important, not everything can be quantified."

------
ed25519FUUU
This reminds me a little bit of the push to add “art” to STEM schools.

~~~
tengbretson
I've noticed this too! I've seen schools describing their curriculum as STEAM,
and all I could think was "Isn't that just normal school, but without
history?"

~~~
AnimalMuppet
If you're drunk, you can get history, too. Because then you slur your words,
and it comes out SHTEAM.

~~~
mhh__
Or Sean Connery

------
SeeDave
I would prefer a university structure where B.S. + M.S. is earned in four
years by focusing on core major requirements to then have humanities courses
offered at no cost via the alumni association as part of continuing education
throughout one's twenties.

~~~
qntty
That's funny because I actually think that the opposite would be nice. You
never know what technical knowledge you'll end up needing, so it would be nice
to have technical education integrated with work throughout the first several
years of working. But everyone can benefit from having a broad education in
liberal arts and sciences.

~~~
waheoo
Youre forgetting that study is optional and most of us have little to no
interest in liberal arts and sciences.

~~~
enterabdazer
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436342)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436077)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23436085)

Do we need fancier widgets or people with the capacity for and appreciation of
human development?

Is the world suffering from a lack of scientific progress or a lack of
sophistication in human problems?

Do more people suffer from depression or insufficient software quality?

Do you think that the people who develop software could benefit from exposure
to wider philosophical thought or from a better IDE?

Outside of technology, are we better, more capable human beings than we were
100 years ago?

It's alarming that many STEM-natives think the wider human experience isn't
worthwhile. It's a prerequisite for progress.

Technology is just tools, and tools are means to an end. What's the end we're
shooting for? That's the humanities.

~~~
hliyan
I agree. Let me reproduce the last paragraph of the top level comment I
submitted above:

 _Finally, as someone trained in the physical sciences, I used to look down on
social scientists. I no longer do this. At least they 're brave enough to
tackle a complex monster with the limited tools at their disposal, stumbling
and even enduring ridicule from the hard sciences. We ignore the human mind
and collections thereof, because it's too complex and prefer the relative
comfort of simple, predictable systems. I don't believe that's good._

------
everyone
Why are they even taught in colleges? They're more of a hobby thing really
(and more enjoyable that way imo)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Because not everybody wants to be in STEM. And because even those who are in
STEM need to know that humanity does not live by STEM alone. (We'd like our
STEM to treat people like humans, rather than like machines.)

A "liberal education" originally meant that those who pursued it were free.
They weren't pursuing an education of mere techniques, which was for slaves.
Even today, there is a place for learning things that don't have a direct
economic impact, as part of becoming an educated person.

That's from the more idealistic side of me. Now here comes the cynicism. Why?
Because people still want to major in them, so that they can say that they
have a college degree without having to major in something rigorour. And those
people pay tuition. And the colleges like getting paid.

~~~
non-entity
Apparently the natural sciences were once grouped into liberal arts as well

~~~
BeetleB
Indeed, my alma mater has the natural sciences in the same college as the
arts. Engineering is separate.

