Don’t get me wrong, I’m as quick as anyone to roll my eyes at psychology/sociology/communications/education majors. In the academic world, they are simply uncool and there’s nothing they can say or do about it. However, as a fellow “soft scientist” I feel a responsibility to make a case for the underdogs of the university playground.
Four of my best friends are biology fanatics. They can hardly suppress a dramatic fake gag at the mere mention of the “ology”s on the other side of the science spectrum. For their love of equations and absolutes, the statistical analysis of human behavior based on surveys and subjective observation is the scholastic equivalent of identifying shapes of various animal species in passing clouds. To them, philosophies about human nature, theories of communication, and hypothesis of sociological phenomena are matters of opinion that any stratospheric warm front of hot air could transform into the likes of a crocodile holding a balloon. They want data. They want true or false, black or white. A2+B2=C2. Period.
But for all the grey ambiguity involved in political and social sciences, to declare all “softies” to be smoke-blowing thumb-twiddlers is pompously misguided. A common accusation is that the work they perform is not real or practical, and it's all just guesswork to create quasi solutions to irrelevant problems.
I beg to differ. In fact, it is the absence of clear formulaic answers that make such areas of study even more challenging and yet even more essential for society. When a soldier returns from war, the psychologist cannot write up an algebraic equation to alleviate his post-traumatic stress. When a classroom of underprivileged 5th graders need to improve their standardized test scores, the teacher cannot mix up a chemical solution to stimulate their learning (as much as the advocates of Ritalin may want us to believe).
And that is exactly the flaw in modern scientific thought--as especially seen in the medical field. You got a problem? Here is the empirical answer in the form of a $400 prescription.
Soft sciences are not exact sciences (in the sense that Input 1 yields Result 2), but they are very real and relevant to society. Psychologists, social workers, educators, and yes--even politicians face problems every day that demand action, even when (and especially when) there is no clear-cut answer. It strikes me as ironic that a person hovering all day under a vacuum hood pipetting microscopic cells would accuse work outside of the hard sciences as “nonreal.”
The point is that we need each other (as the emerging branch of holistic medicine is suggests with the integrating of physical health and emotional/spiritual well being). The world is not all cold hard facts. But it is not all warm fuzzy emotions either. For better understanding of human beings and this world we live in, the catalyst for progress is a little dose of mutual respect.
(So therefore the most important study of all is obviously Peace Studies. Bam.)
No comments:
Post a Comment