H2 Knowledge and Inquiry — Social Science as Unscientific (27/30)

1 Ok. Long Passage [RI Promo 2022] The main conclusion of the passage is that there is great danger in believing social science to be scientific. This is undergirded by a central intermediate conclusion that even though social science purports to discover absolute truths about humanity, it is nowhere as justified as science is. The author offers three reasons why: (1) that measurements are never precise in social science, (2) that social science can never achieve the same predictive power as the natural sciences, and (3) theories ‘predict’ phenomena only because of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Ultimately, while I accept the author’s claim that social scientific knowledge is not as objective and reliable as knowledge in the natural sciences, I do not agree with the author’s ultimate position that the social sciences should not be believed to be scientific.1 The author’s first two reasons are undergirded by a central comparison of social science with the natural sciences — he first argues that social science cannot achieve the same precise measurements as the natural sciences, because people are unique and some social phenomena (e.g. social bonds) cannot be adequately quantified. This is an accurate observation — indeed, many social scientists have to resort to inadequate proxies to quantify intangible phenomena. For instance, the World Happiness Report assigns a numerical value for how happy a particular nation’s populace by measuring the tangible metrics of GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy and the amount of social support. Not only do these metrics not adequately capture the full complexity of human happiness (influenced by intangible factors like family ties, romantic success etc.), but they also fail to account for the varying conceptions of happiness unique to each individual — one might really value their quality of sleep but another might value the quality of public transport. Additionally, the author is right to point out that natural phenomena are far more “simple and stable” — while voltage is only determined by current and resistance (V=IR), human satisfaction is influenced by far more factors as explicated above, making it inherently difficult to precisely quantify in a mathematical manner. To that end, the author’s claim that social science

2 How does precision impact justification? 3 Anything else you can say about this? AO1? 4 Ok. 5 Ok, and? Consider the implications on social scientific knowledge in general. (Explain the larger point / principle.) is not as precisely quantified as the natural sciences hold water, lending weight to his claim that the social sciences are ‘less justified’ than the natural sciences.2 The author’s second reason — that social science achieves less predictive power — is also an astute and accurate one. The author first correctly explains that social systems are affected by the presence of an observer — this Hawthorne effect has been widely documented across social scientific study. In the 1920s,