I try to express this sentiment to people, but its a hard concept to communicate. However Sean Carroll says it well over at Cosmic Variance.
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None of which is to say that social scientists are less capable or knowledgable about their fields than natural scientists. Their fields are much harder! Where “hard” characterizes the difficulty of coming up with models that accurately capture important features of reality.
Physics is the easiest subject of all, which is why we know enormously more about it than any other science. The social sciences deal with fantastically more complicated subjects, about which it’s very naturally more difficult to make definitive statements, especially statements that represent counterintuitive discoveries. The esoteric knowledge that social scientists undoubtedly possess, therefore, doesn’t translate directly into actionable understanding of the world, in the same way that physicists are able to help get a spacecraft to the moon.
I think this reflects the fundamental reason why most people have trouble with physics and mathematics. Our brains evolved to synthesize "good enough guesses" about the nature of the world around us, with "good enough" usually meaning useful for a local part of time and space. We easily guess where a ball will fall on a windy day, but find it inordinately difficult to _calculate_ that in advance.
ReplyDeleteThe algebraic manipulations which take us from F=ma to the equations of motion for a ball in wind are, each of them, quite simple (let's neglect for the moment how we come to things like F=ma, etc) and we can and do teach children to carry them out. Yet most people cannot believe that these plodding, simple steps are really bringing us somewhere, and believe that because they cannot leap ahead to the solution, they must be dumb.
Good physicists might learn a few of the common steps and leap around a bit, but they never doubt the reliability of good old mathematical plodding, the slow walk from step to step on the way to a solution. This doesn't require great insight or intellectual power, and yet it is just this which, I believe, prevents most people from excelling in abstract pursuits. Weird!
I agree. Good point concerning the 'good enough guesses'. It interesting that having the patience to plod is a rarity. As an acquired skill developed with training, it's still so undervalued by society.
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