Anthropology a Science? Statement Deepens a Rift

New York Times ^ | December 9, 2010 | Nicholas Wade

[BenKenobi]

Which is the reason why physics is more scientific than either biology or chemistry.

[exDemMom]

Biology is certainly a science, but much cannot be measured and little can be predicted.

I don't know about that. As a biochemist, I measure things all the time, and I seem to recall making all kinds of measurements throughout my biology classes. True, most life scientists don't engage in the heavy calculus like physicists do--for some reason, most of the biological functions that I am familiar can be nicely analyzed with logarithmic equations. But we certainly use the math and make predictions (otherwise, how could we do hypothesis-driven research?).

[Wuli]

The problem, in my view, about the dominant modern approach of most anthropologists is that they make far too much, far too broad, far too detailed pronouncements about the meaning of what they find, for what is often the scanty, slim evidence that they actually find.

[LexRex in TN]

I guess I'm in good company then--

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. Doth saith Robert Heinlein

[neverdem]

Excellent exerpting & comments too!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Thank you kindly.

[1010RD]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2640914/posts

The Problem: Most scientists in this country are Democrats.

The Party of Irrationality has taken over “science”.

[1010RD]

Economics is a social science. The attempt to mathify it and make it a science has made it dismal.

[mad_as_he$$]

Humm, if you cannot reduce a chemical reaction to math it does not exist.

[AndyJackson]

This is shear and utter ignorance. Most of the interesting chemical reactions under study these days are complex biological molecules taht cannot be "reduced to math" on the world's biggest supercomputers -not in any sort of predictive fashion.

Individual chemical bonds are pretty well understood and mathematically modeled - though not perfectly or chemistry would be at and end as a science. Complex interactions are not, which is why chemistry and biochemistry remain sciences and not just branches of engineering.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The most progressive Union of Concerned Scientists:

http://www.ucsusa.org/

Got Science?

Sean Hannity is failing science. Send a letter (along with Sean’s report card) to his parent company—Fox News—to let them know that he needs to stop talking about global warming until he can get the science right.

[1010RD]

I’ve followed those idiots for decades. Their Doomsday Clock is such a joke.

They hate America and they’re the kind of intellectual cowards that would lay down and die rather than fight and live.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The first person who identifies life from somewhere other than the earth will be famous forever.

There’s plenty of motivation.

[DesScorp]

"“Anthropology” hasn’t been a science in decades. It is a “science” on the same level as “sociology.”"
None of the so-called social sciences are really science. There are a lot of valid fields of study.... history, politics, etc. But none of them is a science. Nothing irks a chemist or a physicist like hearing a sociologist refer to himself as a "social scientist". WTH? Do you have experiments using the scientific method that give the same reproducible results time after time? No? Then you're not a scientist. One of the most ridiculous names in the world for a field of study is "political science".