Science and Math
Many of you have listened to (or tuned out) my "soft science" rants...The ones about areas of study that consider themselves sciences, tend to tack "-ology" behind their names, and really seem to do little more than stamp collecting. Their trade journals and collegiate lectures tend to display a certain sense of insecurity, usually shored up by a demonstrated lack of knowledge of the finer points of the scientific method.
One of my favorite hobby horses is unsolvable equations. You know, the sort of complex, usually calculus-requiring equations that claim to give the precise sociologic value of, say, hair gel in a primitive hunter-gatherer culture as compared to a post-industrial culture--if only you can plug in such variables as relative desirability of a snazzy hairstyle, frequency of male pattern baldness, and number of whales off Puget Sound last Thursday at 4:30...In other words, variables for which no acutal numbers are available or can be generated.
Personally I find Economics and Sociology to be the two biggest offenders.
Anyway, I read something interesting just now:
"To paraphrase Lazarus Long, if you can't express it mathematically, it ain't science. Thus, all real science requires math chops." (thanks Matt G-- http://maypeacebewithyou.blogspot.com/)
Now as you all know, If I Read It On The Internet, It Must Be True. Even so, there's a huge implication here that makes a lot of empirical sense. You just have to know one thing: Lazarus Long was Robert Heinlein's protagonist. The implication here is:
Modern soft-sciences seem to have added these dumb-assed equations to their literature in order to appear more respectably scientific BASED ON THE RECOMMENDATION OF A SCIENCE-FICTION WRITER.
Makes sense to me.
One of my favorite hobby horses is unsolvable equations. You know, the sort of complex, usually calculus-requiring equations that claim to give the precise sociologic value of, say, hair gel in a primitive hunter-gatherer culture as compared to a post-industrial culture--if only you can plug in such variables as relative desirability of a snazzy hairstyle, frequency of male pattern baldness, and number of whales off Puget Sound last Thursday at 4:30...In other words, variables for which no acutal numbers are available or can be generated.
Personally I find Economics and Sociology to be the two biggest offenders.
Anyway, I read something interesting just now:
"To paraphrase Lazarus Long, if you can't express it mathematically, it ain't science. Thus, all real science requires math chops." (thanks Matt G-- http://maypeacebewithyou.blogspot.com/)
Now as you all know, If I Read It On The Internet, It Must Be True. Even so, there's a huge implication here that makes a lot of empirical sense. You just have to know one thing: Lazarus Long was Robert Heinlein's protagonist. The implication here is:
Modern soft-sciences seem to have added these dumb-assed equations to their literature in order to appear more respectably scientific BASED ON THE RECOMMENDATION OF A SCIENCE-FICTION WRITER.
Makes sense to me.
posted by Ted @ 05:09
4 Comments:
At 12/8/07 22:53 ,
Yankee John said...
"In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting."
-Ernest Rutherford
At 14/8/07 18:32 ,
KAISER ANDY I said...
"This is Science's chance to be daring."
-Cliff Buxton, The Dishmaster
At 15/8/07 16:36 ,
KAISER ANDY I said...
"We were caught practicing geology without a license."
-Loui Alverez
At 15/10/07 15:24 ,
Matt G said...
"You just have to know one thing: Lazarus Long was Robert Heinlein's protagonist."
And Heinlein was an engineer, who believed in numbers to support what you built. Building a ship? An engineer could find the stresses of a span of steel. Pushing the ship through water? An engineer could figure the mass, draft, displacement, and come up with the thrust necessary to get the ship up to speed. (Heinlein got his engineering degree at Annapolis.)
The relationship between physisists and engineers is amusing. Physisists often sneer at engineers for applying constants and principles without having found or even necessarily fully understood the theory behind them. Engineers roll their eyes at pencil pushers who never use their wild theories to do anything. Mechanical physicists and mechanical engineers sit on the same continuum of knowledge, though.
Economics is one of those things we really believe has an answer. It's about how much money will be in a given economy. That's something we can count, right? Problem is, in microeconomics, there're are too many fluctuations, and in macroeconomics, there are too many holes to plug with numbers from your equations and account for. The margins for error cancel each other out, and the ship begins to sink.
People that practice these sciences make a LOT more money than I do.
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