Social Science

Social SCIENCE? Having a laugh or what?

"Economics is not a Science" - George Soros

1. Why so called "Social Science" is not a science at all:


• They use "equation" when they really mean "approximation".
• They use "theory" when they really mean "proposition".
• They use "prediction" when they really mean "speculation".
• They use "determine" when they really mean "estimate" or even worse "guess".



• All the "theories" they claim are NOT a theory!
  - Their theories do not work, while mathematical theories do work.
  
• All the "laws" they claim are NOT a law!
  - Their so called laws can be broken while natural laws cannot broken (at least under the right circumstance).
  



2. Why so called "Social Sciences" are alchemies and can never achieve the same status as Natural Sciences

I had always bothered with the word "Science" in so called "Social Sciences", as I believed they were not science. And when I found out that George Soros doesn't believe that economics is a science, I was delighted. Furthermore, he had given an explanation for why it can never be a science: "reflexivity". It is quite simple, so called "Social Sciences", or I prefer to call them as "Social Studies", are more or less the studies of human behaviour as an individual or as a society, hence the name "Social Studies". However there is a big problem: the subject and the object of these studies are the same! Therefore most of the attempts to explain the behaviour of us is likely going to change our behaviour, making the explanation (or they like to call it "theory") obsolete.

I believe his explanation is perfectly acceptable, yet I am troubled by the fact that many academic institutes are adopting more and more mathematical approaches to their studies, as to become more scientific. Meantime those mathematical models are becoming more and more complex with ever increasing errors and uncertainties. It is ironic that so many are more and more relying on these mathematical models despite their ever lowering power of prediction. Now most big companies and firms will demand their employees to make decisions solely on those models. So all the nice intuitions and nice explanations of the "social studies" with common sense go out of the window. There was a little surprise for the current financial crisis for those who still keep their intuitions and common sense as the current financial crisis is largely as a result of these faulty mathematical models, which worked so well over the last 3 or 4 years, that some people actually started to believe in these models completely. But when you add these uncertainties and errors over the period of time, they could be huge.

But "reflexivity" is only one of the many reasons for why so called "Social Sciences" cannot be science. Another reason is the problem with uncertainty as I have mentioned earlier. Natural scientists take uncertainty as a fact and always take it into account and make limitations on their models and predictions. So uncertainty in the model of human behaviour has got to be big, even bigger for a group of people. Another reason will be chaotic character in some behaviours of large groups of people.
Finally, there are so many things (variables, quantities whatever you wanna call them) in social studies that simply cannot be quantified and hence cannot be modelled.