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Biology, a hard science? Well, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves now...
by mannerheim 4y ago
Biology, a hard science? Well, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves now...
- mattkrause 4y agoYes? It was on the softer side in Auguste Compte’s original 19th century definition, but things have moved on quite a bit since then. Platt’s famous article on “Strong Inference” explicitly calls out molecular biology as a success—-and does so ahead of physics! Storer calls biochemistry a hard science and botany a “medium hard” one. The whole idea of a single, uni-dimensional spectrum of “hardness” is pretty silly, but even within it, the natural sciences (especially in the lab) are pretty unambiguously “hard”.
- pvaldes 4y agoNot so hard as geology for sure, but Biology is wide. What means "hard" in this context?