xkcd on purity of scientific fields

The above says that chemistry is applied physics because we know how to do chemistry without actually applying physics. :wink:

Physics without maths aint gonna…

Maths without Philosophy aint gonna …

and so on..

Only the psychologist has a beard and a pair of spectacles.:cool:

And there is gender equality among the numbers.

Physicist seems to in a combative mood.

And the mathematician is waaay distant from the others.:wink:

The mouseover:

“On the other hand, physicists like to say physics is to math as sex is to masturbation.”

Amusingly, one of the toughest Mathematician/statisticians out there, Tamino from Open Mind, called the ones that are abusing math in an attempt to discredit physicists that are working on the climate change issue Mathturbators. :slight_smile:

Agreed. (Biochemist)

Finally, intelligent discussion!:smiley:

Logic should be on there and be higher than math, and philosophy should be on there and be higher than logic (or perhaps standing with).

Then it should be arranged in a circle, with sociology meeting up with philosophy.

:slight_smile:

(physicist here)

I just flashed back on an argument Sheldon had with Amy on The Big Bang Theory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6jfI10WMGA

But how would any of them know that?

My. God.

That show is abysmal.

I mean, I’d seen snippets and I’d heard from others but I’d never imagined…

Okay, OT and impolite I know sorry!

That is just one definition, of course.

There is a sort of thread of reductionist science where people attempt to understand a system from “first principles”. There ARE physicists who do their best to infer atomic properties from quantum equations, though you’re correct that the calculations are only feasible to a point (IIRC carbon atoms are too complicated to model analytically). So with heavy atoms, physicists use estimates and shortcuts to model the quantum properties. Similarly, there are scientists who use abstractions and approximations of quantum physics to understand chemistry.

And so on, with structural biologists modeling big macromolecules with abstractions of quantum chemistry, biochemists modeling larger scale reactions and interactions using structural data, molecular biologists modeling cell behavior with knowledge of biochemistry (which is where I sit), etc…

Not that there’s a single linear relationship, but in any field there is a reductionist approach that uses principles of the more “basic” or “fundamental” sciences. There’s a limit of course, you can’t simulate the human brain from “first principles” of quantum physics. But you can attempt to simulate a simpler brain if you understand cell behavior and a bit of the underlying biochemistry.

Anything with more than one electron is too complicated to model purely analytically. Most atoms can be done semi-analytically, though (i.e., as a series of a bunch of perturbative terms), and you can always work them out numerically using various techniques (actually, “numerically” and “semi-analytically” are ultimately the same thing; the difference is just how feasible it is to do without a computer to keep track of everything).

But it is the correct one.

Of course, there are voodoo sciences that don’t generate falsifiable hypotheses and are fever swamps of unproven and unproveable theories. With real science we can at least discard that which is false.

It is possible to falsify hypotheses in psychology, sociology, economics, and the like; it’s just a lot harder. And of course even after you’ve falsified a hypothesis there will still be many folks insisting you haven’t, but then that’s true of biology and physics, too.

Are you sure? Based on what I’ve seen, some theories fall out of fashion, but are they really falsified?

" . . . and Math is really hard."

You forgot the best part.


A Venn Diagram format would be more informative, but would be hard to make one that wasn’t insulting to several fields.

“It’s only science if it postulates falsifiable hypotheses” is a vast oversimplification of actual philosophy of science. For starters, nothing is really falsifiable. See: “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” W. V. O. Quine, Philosophical Review, 1951. Also the characteristics of “soft” sciences that might make them seem unfalsifiable are usually shared (albeit often to a lesser degree) by “hard” sciences.

It would be nice if people who’ve spent ten minutes reading about Popper on Wikipedia wouldn’t dismiss entire fields of study as non-scientific because their insight has made them authorities on the subject to match Lakatos or Feyerabend.

And where have you seen what you’ve seen? Pop culture/media coverage? When one of the constant stream of miraculous cancer cures suddenly stop getting reported on, is it out of fashion or quietly falsified?

Off the top of my head, I would say Phrenology is a falsified Psychological theory.

Indeed, I have run into those kind of dismissive fellows many times already, you have no idea how many Maththurbators are out there! :slight_smile: