MacRaven - Dave Haxton's Weblog

Fri, 17 Aug 2012

Humanities aren’t a science. Stop treating them like one.

In short, stop trying to quantify the unquantifiable. Sound advice for any endeavor.

Every softer discipline these days seems to feel inadequate unless it becomes harder, more quantifiable, more scientific, more precise. That, it seems, would confer some sort of missing legitimacy in our computerized, digitized, number-happy world. But does it really? Or is it actually undermining the very heart of each discipline that falls into the trap of data, numbers, statistics, and charts? Because here’s the truth: most of these disciplines aren’t quantifiable, scientific, or precise. They are messy and complicated. And when you try to straighten out the tangle, you may find that you lose far more than you gain.

(link) [Scientific American]

/Technology | 2 writebacks | permanent link

On 8/19/2012 11:22:19
Rod Landreth wrote

But ...

Then Daithi, what the frak do we do? I'm trying to articulate some concept, based on Heathen religious view (ancient and modern), borrowing from several disciplines sometimes stretching *their* definitions only to be dismissed as "not rational" or even worse, just my opinion ... often disguised as the word and "concept" of UPG. The Hard Recons are getting a solid foothold in modern Heathenry today, thus they are getting a stronger say. I blame the internet for this. When a fact, and a "truthy" fact, are damn near impossible to distinguish without a lot of experience ... sources become important. Plus, since most people don't actually know me, I'm just a yet another voice amoungst hundreds. So me and my kindred have expanded the view of Thyle (combining it with understandings of ancient world, that of the Icelandic Lawspeaker, a good dollop of Robert's rules parlimentarian, and our own needs and wants) and it is dismissed as poppycock because it doesn't match up with Beowulf's Unferth, and three academics books, usually not caring one whit about the religious/spiritual considerations, not writing from the perspective and based on historical assumptions rather than a religious practioners view, thus it is not valid. How do we that deal, try to comprehend, and explain the ephemeral and such do so when the very topic isn't a mathematical process? Tossing out such as nonsense, which many of the academic, scholars, and other such "empericists" do, means a great deal isn't really explained or understood *at all*!!! To reduce a concept (an easy goto is "Love") to its biology (or some other "hard science" discipline) doesn't really explain much. Sure we could probably chemically "stop" it or "encourage it" but as such is a primary motivator in much of history and tale ... it doesn't really help us much biologically defining it.

On 8/19/2012 17:58:14
Dave H wrote

I think we're on the same page here...

Hail Rod: Nice to hear from you. I think we're on the same page here - I took the essence of Ms. Konnikova's critique to be a strike against the "hard recon" type of position. Perhaps I misunderstood her example, but I see the analysis of the "social network" structure of Beowulf used to prove the poem's historicity as entirely bogus. In fact, as poetry, it's historicity is essentially meaningless except in a footnote kind of fashion. I can draw alot from poetry that is NOT historical - for example the Lay of Thrym and Lokesenna. I'm certainly no academic, but I do read widely and constantly note the attempt on the part of some academic social scientists to quantify, as in your example, notions like "love" and "faith" to hard numbers, and from them to reduce them to mere biology. This is really becoming evident in the trend to make psychosis an entirely biological malfunction, absolving the psychotic of a degree of guilt in criminal cases. I've called it the insanity defense on steroids. In a Heathen context, what really irks me is exactly what you describe - the reduction of all "truth" to mathematical and statistical textual analysis of sources, without explanation, and the dismissal of any insight not so gained as mere unsubstantiated personal gnosis. What needs to happen (IMHO) is to broaden our understanding of exactly what our sources are - they're ancient personal gnosis, substantiated only by the passage of time and the observations and notations of the intervening generations. Ultimately, everything was a UPG once upon a time. Thanks for commenting, and by all means reply if I've missed something here. Be well, Dave H

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MacRaven
Dave Haxton's Weblog
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