Human Sciences — Scope and Methods & Tools
Notes
Essay title (May 22 Major): “Is there solid justification for regarding knowledge in the natural sciences more highly than knowledge in another area of knowledge?”
Key word: solid = reasonable, evidence-based. The essay requires critical evaluation — not simply defending natural sciences, but examining the criteria used to rank knowledge.
Scope: What Is a Human Science?
Systematic, empirical study of human behaviour and society. Core disciplines: psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology. Notably absent: politics, World Religions, Business Management (borderline).
The defining contrast with natural sciences: human sciences study things that depend on human agreement (). The subject matter of the natural sciences would exist without human beings; the subject matter of the human sciences would not.
The :
- Hawthorne effect — workers produced more whenever observed, regardless of conditions
- Goodhart’s paradox — when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure
- — the measuring instrument disturbs the phenomenon
: things that exist only because we collectively agree they do — money, marriage, borders. A feature unique to the human sciences.
Methods & Tools: No Universal Method
Each discipline developed its own methods, and they don’t transfer well across the AoK.
- Psychology — controlled lab experiments (Peterson & Peterson, 1959: short-term memory lasts ~18 seconds without rehearsal). Gain: precision. Cost: .
- Economics — models (circular flow of income; MONIAC, 1949). Behavioral economics (Kahneman & Tversky): people are predictably irrational — .
- Sociology — surveys, questionnaires, structured/unstructured interviews. Quantitative vs. qualitative trade-offs.
- Anthropology — participant observation. Robin Nagle (NYC sanitation dept.). Deep but prone to .
Unlike natural sciences, there is no single method that defines this AoK. Concepts and findings do not generalise easily across disciplines.