well mr eric, i am just a kitten and have not met nearly as many people as you have, but it does seem like maybe physicists spend their careers trying to help people find things out about the nature of reality while social scientists generally seem to be trying to stop people from learning stuff like that so that they can tell stories about hallucinatory landscapes.
if the key claim in your geography class was the existence of narnia, mightn’t you want to keep people from having too close a look at your assumptions too?
I don't disagree w/ you at all. But I find this sad. In my college days (two decades ago now) sociology was an interesting discipline for studying societies and cultures as a neutral (if not dispassionate) observer. Sociologists were helpful for identifying trends, unhealthy or healthy, and overall comparative patterns. Then we started to get observer-participant research where sociologists were no longer expected to be neutral, and suddenly sociology is no longer expected to be a neutral science but a driver of change. There is a correlation in linguistics. You have the prescription versus description approaches to language. "Latinx" would be a great example. 97% of Latinos don't even like the term (and why would they? The addition of an X is an *English* thing, so "woke" English is colonizing an imported Spanish word). Yet our barely-there president has the nerve to use that term to appease 3% of the Latino population but 100% of the woke white population in a speech (in which he also suggest all Latinos in the US are not only immigrants but those that are here sans invitation). Now a descriptivist linguist and an old-school sociologist would find this disgusting and a bit of an alarming trend. But the prescriptivist "woke" linguists and sociologists are cheering on this insanity and don't want to allow even the 97% of Latinos to get in their way of changing the language, even though they claim to be against assimilation and colonization. As a regular old bystander, I find this morbidly fascinating.
gender and race are 'belief' systems, with many possible cathedrals. if your cathedral is not based on calumny, hatred and avarice you are apostate.....
physicists on the other hand tend to look for evidence and seek correction.
shorter physicists do not shun epistemology as do social sciences (including some virologists, public healthers and epidemiologists) in the modern agitprop sphere
hallucinatory is a big word for a kitten to type...
I fear you give too much credit to physicists, especially theoretical physicists. All fields of human endeavor (business, medicine, science) are subject to the vagaries of ego and group think. Physicists have an advantage in that most people haven't a clue what they are talking about.
I don't disagree w/ you at all. But I find this sad. In my college days (two decades ago now) sociology was an interesting discipline for studying societies and cultures as a neutral (if not dispassionate) observer. Sociologists were helpful for identifying trends, unhealthy or healthy, and overall comparative patterns. Then we started to get observer-participant research where sociologists were no longer expected to be neutral, and suddenly sociology is no longer expected to be a neutral science but a driver of change. There is a correlation in linguistics. You have the prescription versus description approaches to language. "Latinx" would be a great example. 97% of Latinos don't even like the term (and why would they? The addition of an X is an *English* thing, so "woke" English is colonizing an imported Spanish word). Yet our barely-there president has the nerve to use that term to appease 3% of the Latino population but 100% of the woke white population in a speech (in which he also suggest all Latinos in the US are not only immigrants but those that are here sans invitation). Now a descriptivist linguist and an old-school sociologist would find this disgusting and a bit of an alarming trend. But the prescriptivist "woke" linguists and sociologists are cheering on this insanity and don't want to allow even the 97% of Latinos to get in their way of changing the language, even though they claim to be against assimilation and colonization. As a regular old bystander, I find this morbidly fascinating.
My degree in geography and love of CS Lewis makes me doubly qualified to enjoy this analogy.
for some facts and truth do not need to overlap
gender and race are 'belief' systems, with many possible cathedrals. if your cathedral is not based on calumny, hatred and avarice you are apostate.....
physicists on the other hand tend to look for evidence and seek correction.
shorter physicists do not shun epistemology as do social sciences (including some virologists, public healthers and epidemiologists) in the modern agitprop sphere
hallucinatory is a big word for a kitten to type...
hallucinatory landscapes would be an awesome band name.
You have the very best way with words.
I fear you give too much credit to physicists, especially theoretical physicists. All fields of human endeavor (business, medicine, science) are subject to the vagaries of ego and group think. Physicists have an advantage in that most people haven't a clue what they are talking about.