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In physics, chemistry, materials science, etc. quantitative is orders of magnitude better than qualitative. In the social sciences the two may be the same qual

by hoopd 11y ago

In physics, chemistry, materials science, etc. quantitative is orders of magnitude better than qualitative. In the social sciences the two may be the same quality but that's largely because they've had such little success with quantitative methods.

scarmig 11y ago
I'm torn--parts of me agree with you (which is why I said holding field of study constant in my original comment), while other parts disagree. Quantitative is just a style of argument, and it alone can be used to argue for or against good or bad science. E.g. at the onset the Copernican Revolution, quantitative arguments actually were stronger for the Ptolemaic model. The core body of science, however, is a complex of evidence-gathering, hypothesis generation, and hypothesis testing, that collectively generate new sources of and frames for evidence. There's no particular reason that you've got to be able to build an isomorphism between a class of evidence and a numeric type in order for that evidence to be valuable and scientific. On the other hand, I find it hard to argue with the observation that doing science with numbers seems to lead to a better and healthier scientific community (better in the sense of making testable predictions that pass their tests and suggest new lines of evidence).
- SapphireSun 11y ago
  I think the principle is basically, go for the best evidence you can get. Sometimes you need to do qualitative research before you can formulate the right questions to ask.
- hoopd 11y ago
  I think you're being partially blinded by a complex definition of science. A more intuitive notion of science is that the strength of an idea is based on evidence alone. The philosophers will hate you but science will make more sense. > There's no particular reason that you've got to be able to build an isomorphism between a class of evidence and a numeric type in order for that evidence to be valuable and scientific. As you hinted at, the experiment has been unofficially done many times and the evidence suggests the quantitative approach is better. That is the particular reason as far as I can tell. (Numbers may not be technically essential, but measurement and comparison are. That leads to things like everybody agreeing that a piece of metal in Europe is exactly one kilogram and everybody talks about mass in reference to that one object. It was a qualitative decision to choose which kilogram became the standard, but from then on measuring mass was quantitative and easily communicable. Fields that can't establish conventions for their observables in this way are generally not very scientific.) My argument was that when holding the field constant puts qualitative and quantitative science on the same footing, it's a bad sign for that field. Take chemistry: when qualitative arguments were equal to quantitative it was called Alchemy. When quantitative approaches took over it changed the world.

by hoopd 11y ago

scarmig 11y ago

I'm torn--parts of me agree with you (which is why I said holding field of study constant in my original comment), while other parts disagree. Quantitative is just a style of argument, and it alone can be used to argue for or against good or bad science. E.g. at the onset the Copernican Revolution, quantitative arguments actually were stronger for the Ptolemaic model. The core body of science, however, is a complex of evidence-gathering, hypothesis generation, and hypothesis testing, that collectively generate new sources of and frames for evidence. There's no particular reason that you've got to be able to build an isomorphism between a class of evidence and a numeric type in order for that evidence to be valuable and scientific. On the other hand, I find it hard to argue with the observation that doing science with numbers seems to lead to a better and healthier scientific community (better in the sense of making testable predictions that pass their tests and suggest new lines of evidence).

SapphireSun 11y ago
I think the principle is basically, go for the best evidence you can get. Sometimes you need to do qualitative research before you can formulate the right questions to ask.
hoopd 11y ago
I think you're being partially blinded by a complex definition of science. A more intuitive notion of science is that the strength of an idea is based on evidence alone. The philosophers will hate you but science will make more sense. > There's no particular reason that you've got to be able to build an isomorphism between a class of evidence and a numeric type in order for that evidence to be valuable and scientific. As you hinted at, the experiment has been unofficially done many times and the evidence suggests the quantitative approach is better. That is the particular reason as far as I can tell. (Numbers may not be technically essential, but measurement and comparison are. That leads to things like everybody agreeing that a piece of metal in Europe is exactly one kilogram and everybody talks about mass in reference to that one object. It was a qualitative decision to choose which kilogram became the standard, but from then on measuring mass was quantitative and easily communicable. Fields that can't establish conventions for their observables in this way are generally not very scientific.) My argument was that when holding the field constant puts qualitative and quantitative science on the same footing, it's a bad sign for that field. Take chemistry: when qualitative arguments were equal to quantitative it was called Alchemy. When quantitative approaches took over it changed the world.