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I do not think your argument fair. In fact I find it disappointing. Some things lend themselves to collecting numbers and figures and measurements, and other
by hackbinary 9y ago
I do not think your argument fair. In fact I find it disappointing. Some things lend themselves to collecting numbers and figures and measurements, and other things quite simply do not. Philosophy, history, literature, and human languages are what first come to my mind as important fields of study that have significant impact on our outlook on the universe, but we can't scientifically measure them. Indeed it is philosophical thought and ideas that underpin our modernity. Moreover, much of our collective advancement is in significant peril because 'the arts' have been devalued so much. (Although William H. Miller just donated a significant sum to the John Hopkins philosophy department since he felt his degree in philosophy made him so successful.)
What you go on to speak of in your second paragraph is the art of rhetoric, and ironically you have unwittingly engaged in the very sort of ad hominem attack which you are complaining that you think that liberal arts scholars would use to defend their position.
An ad hominem attack is a classic logical fallacy and that is something that I suggest you research.
- trendia 9y ago> Philosophy, history, literature, and human languages My claim was that some fields avoid data altogether so that they can't really be "disproved", only disagreed with. But in these cases, there are rigorous approaches that rely on data: e.g. analytic philosophy, rigorous history, linguistics, etc. and those approaches generally have a large impact. In linguistics, Chomsky made such a huge impact on human languages because he had developed a rigorous grammar and was able to find counterexamples to many of the existing hypotheses. Chomsky had made testable hypotheses, which could only be backed up or disproven by rigorously studying human languages. And the most recent counterexamples to his grammar (e.g. that some languages lack subordinate clauses) augment rather than disprove it. Similarly, advances in philosophy largely came from rigorous approaches -- Russell's attempts to formalize logic (and somewhat subsequent failure) resulted in Wittgenstein's formalization of the relationship to language, which had a huge impact on subsequent philosophy.
- wsy 9y agoIf you read Quine and Kuhn, you will find that natural science results also cannot really be disproved, only disagreed with. It is a bit funny to see anecdotic evidence given to support the claim that empiric research is superior. Shouldn't you present data instead of anecdotes?
- lotsofpulp 9y agoUnfortunately, in order to make certain claims, you have to have metrics. Just because something is hard to measure doesn't mean you can forego it.
- hackbinary 9y agoHow do you measure the impact of John Locke, David Hume and Adam Smith?