Talk:Hard science

message: I hypothesize there is no distinction between the hard and soft sciences. The example given in the article was about a physicist who determines velocity of a falling object and that this is fact. However, a sociologist may come up with many different hypotheses about causes of poverty.
Couldn't the sociologist set up an experiment involving humans engaged in productive labor and from these experiments get conclusions similar to the way physicists get conclusions from their experiments? The methodology is the same and the only difference is the object studied. Sociologists study people and physicists study energy, time, etc. 
Some believe that it is impossible to perform sociological experiments. But it is not. It may be more difficult, but it is possible. It may be hard to control for all factors because you may not account for all factors, but the same problem exists in physics. To establish causation you need to have a control where only one variable, the variable of interest, is changed, and all other variables held constant. How do you control for all other variables when there could potentially be infinite?
Knowledge-is-power 13:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: No Distinction between Hard and Soft Sciences

message: I've excised all the uses of "he." As anyone who's taken a college English class knows, virtually every English PhD shuns the use of "he." I agree with them. We don't live in the 1950s anymore. Bulldog123 03:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Clarifying things is fine, but let's not be ridiculous.  "He" can be either masculine or gender-indeterminate, depending on usage.  It's counter-productive to create a political issue out of nothing. Wonderstruck 15:13, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Sexist language and grammar cleanup 

message: I added the POV label because the current version has far too much postmodern propaganda. In hard sciences, it is not a matter of philosophical, religious and political insults whether something is correct - which is what the anonymous contributor clearly thinks. --Lumidek 18:47, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Prescriptive grammar is so 1700s!  - FrancisTyers 00:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Postmodern rubbish - POV 

message: I rewrote a lot of it, I think it is more NPOV at the moment, and more useful as an entry. I think it's a good policy to just revert the POV edits by our friend 128.175.241.xxx who seems unable to write a balanced entry. --Fastfission 03:03, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Edits

message: Cut from article:
:The hard vs. soft distinction is one of many possible distinctions between sciences that have developed in the last 200 years. In some ways the term 'hard' science corresponds to the nomothetic science described by Wilhelm Windelband and the Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences) described by Wilhelm Dilthey. 
The reference to "one of many possible distinctions" is ill-advised for a topic sentence, as the paragraph never explains any of the other distinctions. It doesn't even name them. 
So it sounds like an indirect way of saying that it's a false distinction, one which some people just "made up". It is thus a POV and should be identified as such before being put back into the article. Uncle Ed 17:41, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Uhh, how does saying there are other possible ways to distinguish sciences in any way imply that hard science vs. soft science is a false distinction?--71.35.109.198 00:27, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: One of many?

message: i added the npov tag because this article presents an anglo-american viewpoint of science, which is not how science is understood in all of the world.  i also removed uncited assertions. the use of the word empiricism is also problematic, given what they mean in philosophy of science.  in general, the article needs cleaned up and made to map more generally onto scientific understandings in the world, where literature is frequently seen as a science along with history, and they are distinguished from the arts by other demarkations.  --Buridan 12:29, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: if it is contentious, it probably isn't encyclopedia and prolly fails npov.  the bit i deleted had nothing verifiable that i knew of, it seemed like the opinion of a small minority at best, if i'm wrong and it is general knowledge and not the opinion of a small minority, please educate me.  i added content and made contributions that clarified this issue.  reverting it because you disagree is not an ideal strategy, the ideal strategy is to find the cites for the contentious material, or barring that find citable material.   the other criticisms that i put up as npov are just as true with the content as without.  --Buridan 19:35, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  npov and citations 

message: The first sentence of this article has surely inadvertently got the meaning accidentally reversed. “Hard science is a term used to describe certain fields contrasting with (or even opposite to) the social sciences and humanities, usually sociology, literary criticism, and many fields of ethnic studies.
:There may well be a scientific explanation, hard or otherwise, as to how someone could do that inadvertently, three times, but it's beyond me. Hopefully they'll provide an explanation here, but in the meantime the original text is restored. CiaranG 23:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  .. 

message: *Comment - before a discuussion of possible merges it would be nice to see more references, only then can we decide if te subject merits it's own article or not. sbandrews (t) 15:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *I oppose the merger of these terms.  They are related but they have subtle and important differences and should not be merged.  I would not find it useful to be redirected to only one.  M stone 23:36, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge proposal

message: See my comment at Talk:Soft_science#Categorisation, NerdyNSK 15:24, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorisation