Soft science

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Soft science is a colloquial term, often used for academic research or scholarship which is purportedly "scientific" however it is not based on reproducible experimental data, and/or a mathematical explanation of that data. The term is usually used as a contrast to hard science.^[1]

Within the natural sciences, research which depends upon conjecture (sometimes called hypothesis), qualitative analysis of data (compared to quantitative analysis), or uncertain experimental results is sometimes derided as soft science.^[2] Examples are evolutionary psychology^[3] or meteorology^[4]. When soft science refers to a natural science, it is usually used pejoratively, mainly due to the term's association with social science, implying that a particular natural science topic described as "soft" does not belong to the field of natural science.

Different approaches to the scientific method can be distinguished by the research they term "soft science" and what they consider "hard." The issue is important to the philosophy of science (which does not always support the possibility of drawing a distinction between "hard" and "soft") and to science studies and the sociology of science (which study scientists' implicit perceptions of research and methods).

Certain researchers^[who?] have argued that soft science publications make less use of graphs than hard science. This view is known as the graphism thesis.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

^ John Lemons (2008-04-24). Scientific Uncertainty and Environmental Problem Solving. Blackwell, 99. ISBN 0865424764. Retrieved on 2008-04-24.
^ For example, in Waqar Ahmad (1995-07-22). "Race is a four letter word". New Scientist (1987): 44. “Gardner criticises the book's soft science and neglect of alternative explanations.”
^ Cheryl Brown Travis (2003). Evolution, Gender, and Rape. MIT Press, 171. ISBN 0262700905. “If evolutionary biology is a soft science, then evolutionary psychology is its flabby underbelly”
^ Changeable Weather. New Zealand Science Monthly (2007-06-27). Retrieved on 2008-04-24. “Empirically, meteorology positioned itself alongside physics in the "hard sciences", yet theoretically it leans toward the "soft science" of geography.”