From: Vincent Campbell (VCampbell@dmu.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 02 Feb 2004 - 10:42:11 GMT
<This sort of thing makes clear why this area _should_ be left to
> biologists.>
>
The anti cross-disciplinary tone of several comments on the list
recently have been disappointing to say the least, indeed as a social
scientist I could easily take offence. Don't forget that all disciplines
have their wackos- Rupert Sheldrake for instance (sorry Dace)- and their
areas of the unknown- how about some biologist defining life, for instance
(oh, and if someone can, maybe you should tell NASA so they know what to
look for).
There is no contesting that the social sciences have been rather
over-infected with wackos and wacky ideas in recent times, but some of us
are developing immunity to the wilder strains of relativism, postmodernism
and the other crap. Also we are_all_trying to find things to say about one
of the most complex systems humans are aware of- human society and that's
bloody hard especially when the natural sciences have been lagging so far
behind in getting around to study human society, meaning that the social
sciences had to start somewhere, and they were bound to be largely wrong
about most things early on- just like Aristotle or Pliny or Galen were in
the early days of science, but at least they made a start. I'm willing to
be enlightened, as long as there isn't too much heckling and cat-calling- do
science lecturers treat their students the way they sometimes treat social
scientists? If so, no wonder applications for science subjects are falling
through the floor.
Vincent
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