Jacqui.W : AoK#3 Human Sciences

Science can be categorized as 2 main types, soft and hard science, where science is defined as a branch of knowledge or study, which deals with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws.

Empiricism versus rationalism is like hard science versus soft science. Hard science is dependant on our perception, where we HAVE raw data and make sense of it while soft science is dependant on our sense perception where we take in raw data FROM our senses. I think that a hard science is considered one with solid facts and theories which, no matter how many times you do it, it’ll still be true. An example of this would be Hess’s Law in Chemistry. Hess’s Law states that the heat evolved or absorbed in a chemical process is the same whether the process takes place in one or several steps. This is proven to be true in most cases and if not, easily explainable as to why it wasn’t. However if this was tested under controlled environments where everything is perfect and no heat loss if possible, Hess’s Law would be proven correct every time. In comparison, for a soft science, I think it requires a lot more thinking and analyzing and interpretation however, the theories made up here would never be proven to be 100% correct even under controlled environments. An example could be Bradshaw’s Model in Geography. Bradshaw’s Model states that the velocity, wetted perimeter and other factors of a river will either increase or decrease as they go down the long profile of a perfect model river. From personal experience from the Thailand Geography Trip, it shows that Bradshaw’s Model does not fit with the river we studied in Thailand. This is not a personal opinion but a group opinion as no one had perfect results of the river which proves that a soft science theory is harder to prove and only works under certain specific circumstances which must be identical.

Some may argue that I was hypocritical in saying that soft science theories only work under certain specific circumstances similarly like the hard science theories should be tested under controlled environments. However the difference is, for the hard science experiments, it is easy to control the variables for example, mass/volume of reactants, equipment used to measure it and the condition of the room. For soft sciences however, it would be almost impossible to find 2 identical rivers to do the studies on and similarly, if the theory was for humans, it would be impossible to find 2 identical human beings. Even if they were identical twins, they would still be different in their own ways. This is the difference I am trying to explain between the “controlled conditions”. Hard sciences use this for experiments to test something they know, whereas soft sciences are trying to find out if it’s true or not. Although it seems like I have generalized it based on 2 examples only, but after deep thought I have thought about it seriously and believe that this is true in most cases.