Hey Tou Chiu - AoK#3 - Human Sciences

In my opinion, hard sciences allow us to understand the world we live in by basing evidence gathered from empirical research. The conclusions and facts obtained from the experiments conducted provide us with ‘hard’ and difficult to refute explanations. This area of science is usually seen as more accurate than other ‘soft sciences’ as there is less space for argument when compared with sciences like psychology and philosophy. I think a good example of a ‘hard science’ is mathematics. In maths, there are formulas that are ‘solid’ and it is extremely difficult for us to challenge them as they work almost every single time. However, this is not to say that ‘hard sciences’ are impossible to refute.

On the other hand, ‘soft sciences’ usually refer to studies that relate to individual humans. These studies usually make use of qualitative data obtained from experiments and provide explanations relating to cause and effect i.e a certain behaviour. Unlike the ‘hard sciences’ studies of ‘soft sciences’ tend to have more criticisms as there are more aspects and areas that can influence the results of the experiment. More importantly, as the ‘soft sciences’ focuses more on a group of similar people or the individual itself, explanations and conclusions reached from results cannot be generalized to the wider population. This problem in itself is probably why certain sciences are categorized as ‘soft’ since they cannot give a complete picture of everything or everyone.

In fact, I think it is very difficult to clearly distinguish the difference between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences. This is because ‘soft sciences’ are also very similar in their way of investigating things. Research done in ‘soft sciences’ also have variables, hypothesis/predictions, analysis of quantitative data etc that are also methods used in studying the ‘hard sciences’. It can be argued that the only difference between the two is the subject that is being studied.