This xkcd comic caught my eye, with its fields arranged by purity. It reminded me of an old post of mine, in which I was inspired by Comte to wax eloquent on the hierarchy of the sciences. An exerpt:
Of course, there is a hierarchy within the sciences. We are all aware of it. You can see this in the timing of each discipline's arrival into society. First the simple, general sciences. Like physics. This came early (preceded only by astronomy) because its laws are more easily studied, more stable and simple to identify. Following the arrival of physics, science begins to divide and distinguish among other progressively harder fields, such as chemistry, biology, and finally, the social sciences. The emergence follows a clear law of hierarchy marked by increased complexity and decreased generality, the more complex sciences only emerging once the required simple foundations are set. The social sciences are thus at the top of the hierarchy, with sociology being the last to emerge. This is because sociology is the most complex, hard, and specialized science. Sociologists, therefore, are clearly best positioned to take over the world. For its own good, of course.
Pure and simple is for l00zrs.
8 comments:
My undergrad was in Pure Math. Sociology is so much harder. In math there are.. right answers. It just gives you a completely different worldview.
Awww yeah! Anthropologists are off the chart when it comes to purity!
yes, but which end of the chart, hmmmm???
I've never heard it put this way before and (though I'm a little embarrassed about this) I love it!
Not that I didn't know it all along, of course. ;^)
Oo-er, does that mean cultural studies, media studies, business studies etc. tower above us sociologists?
PS Though Comte's argument on the hierarchy of sciences is neat and self-satisfying (well, for me at least), I think Bourdieu does a far better job for sociological imperialism ...
Hmmmm...I don't think I'm familiar with Bourdieu's case for sociological imperialism....
Never really read much Bourdieu, really.
Ahem.
If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object. It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art. And politics appears to be of this nature; for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them; and we see even the most highly esteemed of capacities to fall under this, e.g. strategy, economics, rhetoric; now, since politics uses the rest of the sciences, and since, again, it legislates as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from, the end of this science must include those of the others, so that this end must be the good for man. For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states. These, then, are the ends at which our inquiry aims, since it is political science, in one sense of that term.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Poli sci wins.
There should be laws against Aristotle comments in the summer. My brain is on break (@_@).
But if politics is power, and power corrupts, then how is it for the greater good? However, I thusly concede that poli sci may be the most impure of all.
But I disagree with what Aristotle seems to be claiming in that "it is finer and more godlike to attain [the good and the chief good] for a nation of for city-states." Some individuals don't have any citizenship; they belong to no nation. Who's looking out for their interests?
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