Which social science is the most scientific and which one the least?
>>16260932Anthropology for most. Geography for least.
>>16261007Geography is a funny one since half of it is natural science (earth science) so by that alone it's probably the most scientific of the bunch. Sadly the other half is social mumbo jumbo.
Economics and geography often include SOME mathematically rigorous instruction. There are also quant expressions of poli sci, anthropology, psychology, and sociology. I would thus say that history is the least scientific. However, history's obsession with stupid unified theories is so similar to math and physics, that it should at least be recognized for that.
>>16260932This will surprise you, but I'm going to go with philosophy, because that's the branch that deals with the study of logic and reasoning, and the rest of the social sciences flow from manipulating logic and justifying your opinions of things.
>>16261143>philosophyIt did surprise me, because philosophy isn't a social science at all, so of course I didn't expect someone to be dumb enough to pick something that wasn't even a valid option.
>>16261146>philosophy isn't a social scienceSocial science is a recent term. All social sciences used to be called "philosophies".
>>16261151Yes, and the hard sciences used to be called natural philosophy. That doesn't make them relevant to the question. If this is profound to you, I recommend a dictionary.
>>16261154Sounds like philosophy is the ultimate science, of any type.
>>16260932Quantitative Sociobiology
>>16261136>history's obsession with stupid unified theoriesinteresting, can you elaborate on that?
>>16261157According to David Chalmers, philosophy is more pre-science that science. You get some cutting-edge open questions, you struggle with them for centuries, some smart guy comes (like Newton) and figures out the answers to some of the problem and the new science emerges: physics. The same happened with psychology, economics, biology etc. Philosophy is shrinking with each century.
>>16261245>Philosophy is shrinking with each centurytell me you are just a tard who don't understand philosophy without telling me.
>>16261241Consider your own discipline. In history, people love to talk about how X was actually the result of Y theory. Their preferred everything theory may be dialectal materialism, etc. Whether or not this sort of thinking is wrong isn't for me to say, nor do I even want to comment on the merits of one theory or another, but it parallels the sort of thinking that is very common in math and physics. Given that history is not rigorous, however, these theories wax and wane on the basis of "vibes" as much as research it seems.
>>16261255>doesn't know Chalmers>can't readlmao, you didn't even read one single page of philosophy in your life, you fag. you aren't fooling anybody
>>16261268this sounds like philosophy, not history
>>16261290They're connect disciplines of course. I just raised dialectal materialism as an example. It is a modified version of Hegel's dialectic applied to history. There are many other grand theories with various foundations. Personally, I find the entire exercise of it to be pretty contrived, though not "wrong" per-se. That's what was meant by "stupid".
>>16261007I had to study Geography as part of my Geology degree and let me tell you those guys are based as fuck. You should go study something like Remote Sensing. Basically sunlight is filtered through the sun's atmosphere where it loses a lot of color due to the absorption spectrum of hydrogen and helium and anything else in the sun's atmosphere, gets absorbed again going down to the surface of the Earth by all the gases in our atmosphere, get's reflected off objects to get absorbed a third time by the gases in our atmosphere again, then to be captured by whatever camera you've got on your satellite. After all that you've got to account for the type of camera you have and reinterpret what you're seeing on the ground to exacting detail because people rely on you for natural resources such as water in rainclouds and the growth of plant types in a farmer's field.Those guys earn their keep let me tell you. All respect to Geographers.
>>16261136>I would thus say that history is the least scientificYou forgot history includes archeology. Also just a shitton of scientific legwork to run down what documents are fake, what translations are fucked up, and who is lying about what. Cross-checking sources and comparing physical traces with claims is scientific even if there isn't a beaker involved.Fundamentally history has to be scientific because the past isn't up for debate.
Least is evolutionary psychology. Modern day fucking phrenology.
>>16261136>economics tries to be rigorousyep, but for what end? It's not like they're gonna establish precise laws like in physics. Basically economics is physics envy: the field. In some sense it reminds me of analytic philosophy: a lot of stubborn smart people covering up with muh math the fact that they can't be precise with concepts devoid of rigour to begin with.
>>16261241In terms of reporting on factual data, history is fine (at least within the constraints of the accuracy of available historical records).In terms of reporting on causal relationships, though, it's a clusterfuck because every motherfucker has their own version of "actually - these events were caused by _____". And unfortunately, because of how invariably coupled historical events are, there's often a grain of truth to everyone's respective explanations, but it also leads to a lot of unproductive shit-flinging because Professor So-and-So doesn't recognize Doctor Such-and-Such's new thesis on World War I being caused by the plight of Indonesian grain merchants in the 12th century.
>>16261835Oh yeah, I know what you mean. History lerning at school was fun for me when it concerned actual events, dates and people. But then on the test you had to give every causes and effects of said events and it felt silly to memorise bunch of well established opinions (of course you had to give exactly the sa,e number of causes and effects the teacher was talking about and only them).
>>16261835>>16261849The converse is also true - a lot of historical study tends to try and oversimplify complex issues to "(insert thing here) BAD" or "(insert thing here) GOOD", losing a lot of important historical nuances in the process.Both of these are why I wouldn't consider history a science, but a humanities topic. Reporting on raw historical details (who did what, when, where, etc.) and evaluating records to identify incongruities is certainly a data-driven process, but you can't make a plot of historical events and determine their correlation; history is as much about subjective interpretation of data as it is the data itself.
>>16261793It's more useful then your stupid physics.
>>16260932It's so sad historian in the picture is homeless.
>>16261875I'm more concerned about the psychologist being haunted by hallucinations of a giant blue brain trying to stab her.
>>16261793Not sure what the end is as it's not my field, but the practice of a lot of economics disciplines is very similar to the hard sciences.
>>16261860>Both of these are why I wouldn't consider history a science, but a humanities topicYeah and I always though it's considerer humanities field (at least it's so in my country and at my uni in Europe, not sure how it's classified in USA), the image in the opening post is strangely including history to social sciences which is in my opinion misleading.
>>16261866Ok, I'll bite, in what way? Physics is at leat partially responsible for computers, internet, rockets and satellites, among other things, and that's only shit from 20th century. Show me how economics is even comparable (spoiler alert: it isn't).
>>16262204I know, but without actually delivering good predictive models like in natural sciences.
Linguistics is quite scientific but it's not on the picture. I often think about it as the most scientific social science.
>>16262758Linguists are quant people who want to avoid numbers and make shit harder on themselves.
>>16262625>computers, internet, rockets and satellites, among other thingsengineers do that not your THEORIC physicist.the dynamic optimal allocation of resources in the context of scarce means over time is far more complex than your stoopid physics.
