I love science. I sometimes practise science too, and my education in it is greater than most. Science is useful due to its empirical leanings and attempts to create ordered thought from this. I think you misunderstand my arguments, in that I appreciate and engage in activities which are scientific, and artistic, and aimed at human understanding, and understand that we need different methods depending on what we're trying to discover. And that not all methods are science. You appear OTOH just to wish to say "this is my hammer which I am going to use for everything."

So:

>If you understood science, you would try to locate evidence for your claims. Science doesn't revolve around rhetoric as you seem to believe -- it hinges on repeatable, objective evidence.

Then why are you arguing with bald assertions and no facts, if that is all you care about? why aren't you being scientific about your claims here? You are hoist by your own petard, I'm afraid.

>> And finally, that cartoon is one of Randall's (rare) stupid cartoons.
>That would explain why it's one of his best-known ones, posted everywhere. https://www.google.com/#q=purity+xkcd yields over 30,000 hits.

You are saying that popularity = truth? Seriously? Especially given the skewed population which "likes" that particular one? Ah, you really are a sophist. That's really poor argumentation, poor thought and you really ought to understand this.

>> Sociology lives only on evidence.
>Absurd and false. Shall I tell you the Margaret Mead story, or can I rely on you to educate yourself? Mead's career hinged on a ridiculous study that, in the form of "Coming of Age in Samoa", became gospel among sociologists, even after those she originally interviewed confessed that they invented what they told her. It was a complete fabrication, yet it made Mead's name in the field.
The Mead story is completely typical of the field. There's a reason sociology ranks below psychology in the spectrum of pseudosciences.

Mead is not all sociologists. She's an outlier anthrolologist, for starters, and nothing like, say Thorstein Veblen. I could equally say "Science is fraudulent" because scientists used to believe in Phlogiston. Absurd. You love the Straw Man!

>> Sociology requires entirely different methods from physical sciences because of the subject matter.
>There is one scientific method, not two or six. People who claim they're doing a different kind of science, aren't doing any kind of science.

Oh dear. There is only one scientific method, you say? You really have no clue. Start with Popper, and then Kuhn's response, and google from there. And see the arguments between experimental and theorietical physicists while you're at it, for fun. And then talk to some of the better professors in the different departments at you local university and see how much more sophisticated than you are at epistemology.

Even if there is only one 'scientific method' (please define that, ha!) it remains that that statistical scientific method is not the only way to understand the world.

>> Purity? Purity of what? There's no definition to that variable, which is meaningless except by nee-naah.
You obviously don't understand the fatal flaw at the heart of post-modernism. But you know what? I'm not going to try to correct all the defects in your education. That would be an unrequited charity.
>Science is clearly defined, and for good reason -- everyone wants the stature of science without the discipline. Science is even defined in the law now, to prevent Creationists from using post-modern (i.e. "it's all opinion, there are no shared truths") arguments in order to get religious teaching into public schools.

To say there are more ways to understanding than one single method does not equal saying that all ideas are relative. That's a false binary, and again an appalling straw man.

Get reading in the philosophy of science. You manifestly feel the need for certainty where actually there are interesting questions to be asked. None of my arguments are postmodern. Nor do I claim that sociology is the same as science. All I claim, quite plausibly given the evidence of the past 50-100 years, is that sociology is useful, it has empirically-verifiable methods, and that it does not need to be physical science to be useful.

Here's a useful way to see the world: http://comicsthatsaysomething.quora.com/A-Day-at-the-Park