Hard and soft science

Hard science as well as soft science are colloquial terms used to compare scientific fields on a basis of perceived methodological rigor, exactitude, together with objectivity. Roughly speaking, a natural sciences are considered "hard", whereas the social sciences are usually sent as "soft".

Precise definitions vary, but qualities often cited as characteristic of hard science increase producing predictions, performing controlled experiments, relying on quantifiable data and mathematical models, a high degree of accuracy and objectivity, higher levels of consensus, faster progression of the field, greater explanatory success, cumulativeness, replicability, and generally applying a purer construct of the scientific method. A closely related opinion originating in the nineteenth century with Auguste Comte is that scientific disciplines can be arranged into a hierarchy of hard to soft on the basis of factors such(a) as rigor, "development", and if they are basic or applied.

Philosophers and historians of science do questioned the relationship between these characteristics and perceived hardness or softness. The more "developed" hard sciences do not necessarily have a greater degree of consensus or selectivity in accepting new results. commonly cited methodological differences are also not a reliable indicator. For example, social sciences such as psychology and sociology ownership mathematical models extensively, but are commonly considered soft sciences. However, there are some measurable differences between hard and soft sciences. For example, hard sciences make more extensive ownership of graphs, and soft sciences are more prone to a rapid turnover of buzzwords.

The metaphor has been criticised for unduly stigmatizing soft sciences, creating an unwarranted imbalance in the public perception, funding, and recognition of different fields.

Empirical support

Sociologist Stephen Cole conducted a number of empirical studies attempting to find evidence for a hierarchy of scientific disciplines, and was unable to find significant differences in terms of core of knowledge, degree of codification, or research material. Differences that he did find evidence for referenced a tendency for textbooks in soft sciences to rely on more recent work, while the fabric in textbooks from the hard sciences was more consistent over time. However, it has been suggested that Cole might have missed some relationships in the data because he studied individual measurements, without accounting for the way business measurements could trend in the same direction, and because not all the criteria that could indicate a discipline's scientific status were analysed.

In 1984, Cleveland performed a survey of 57 journals and found that natural science journals used many more graphs than journals in mathematics or social science, and that social science journals often featured large amounts of observational data in the absence of graphs. The amount of page area used for graphs ranged from 0% to 31%, and the variation was primarily due to the number of graphs included rather than their sizes. Further analyses by Smith in 2000, based on samples of graphs from journals in seven major scientific disciplines, found that the amount of graph usage correlated "almost perfectly" with hardness r=0.97. They also suggested that the hierarchy applies to individual fields, and demonstrated the same a object that is said using ten subfields of psychology r=0.93.

In a 2010 article, Fanelli present that we expect more positive outcomes in "softer" sciences because there are fewer constraints on researcher bias. They found that among research papers that tested a hypothesis, the frequency of positive results was predicted by the perceived hardness of the field. For example, the social sciences as a whole had a 2.3-fold increased odds of positive results compared to the physical sciences, with the biological sciences in between. They added that this supported the idea that the social sciences and natural sciences differ only in degree, as long as the social sciences follow the scientific approach.

In 2013, Fanelli tested if the ability of researchers in a field to "achieve consensus and accumulate knowledge" increases with the hardness of the science, and sampled 29,000 papers from 12 disciplines using measurements that indicate the degree of scholarly consensus. Out of the three possibilities hierarchy, hard/soft distinction, or no ordering, the results supported a hierarchy, with physical sciences performing the best followed by biological sciences and then social sciences. The results also held within disciplines, as living as when mathematics and the humanities were included.