Personally, I see them as being softer because they’re about less fundamental, i.e. higher order, systems. Experiments and theories in biology and medicine treat high-level concepts (e.g. organs, tissues, symptoms of diseases) as basic. This is somewhat of a necessity, because the tools to model such things as complex collections of and interactions among the component particles don’t exist yet.
However, when they treat conclusions drawn from those high-level approximations as universal, problems inevitably arise. We might all have organs that seem the same, and are constructed by the same cellular machinery in large part, but there’s still a lot of room for variation. Even subtle variations might have effects that wouldn’t be obvious from theories based on high-level approximations. This is where the lack of rigor is a factor: even if scientists understand that they’re using high-level approximations, they may not want to admit a lack of universality in a result. (I have noticed this to be especially true in psychology.)
I think the focus on universal theories is a shame; something can be perfectly worthwhile even if it’s only useful in some circumstances. Many theories in physics are like this; the usual example is, of course, Newtonian mechanics vs. Einsteinian relativity. A description of some biological or psychological phenomenon can still be useful even if it doesn’t apply to every possible organism/brain. There is, however, the problem that determining the set of circumstances in which such a description might be useful can also be more difficult due to the high-level, complex nature of the subjects.
An example of a theory in psychology I find to be useful even if not universal is Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. Kohlberg himself was quite convinced the stages were universal, and made a few contortions to try to keep it that way. Given that the original theory was formulated based solely on interviews with males in the USA, a limited range of applicability – based largely on culture and to a smaller degree gender, especially as one looks at the higher stages – is more likely. However, the theory is still a good way to understand how people in the USA think about moral issues; it just might not be as good a way to understand how people in other cultures and social settings think.
Personally, I see them as being softer because they’re about less fundamental, i.e. higher order, systems. Experiments and theories in biology and medicine treat high-level concepts (e.g. organs, tissues, symptoms of diseases) as basic. This is somewhat of a necessity, because the tools to model such things as complex collections of and interactions among the component particles don’t exist yet.
However, when they treat conclusions drawn from those high-level approximations as universal, problems inevitably arise. We might all have organs that seem the same, and are constructed by the same cellular machinery in large part, but there’s still a lot of room for variation. Even subtle variations might have effects that wouldn’t be obvious from theories based on high-level approximations. This is where the lack of rigor is a factor: even if scientists understand that they’re using high-level approximations, they may not want to admit a lack of universality in a result. (I have noticed this to be especially true in psychology.)
I think the focus on universal theories is a shame; something can be perfectly worthwhile even if it’s only useful in some circumstances. Many theories in physics are like this; the usual example is, of course, Newtonian mechanics vs. Einsteinian relativity. A description of some biological or psychological phenomenon can still be useful even if it doesn’t apply to every possible organism/brain. There is, however, the problem that determining the set of circumstances in which such a description might be useful can also be more difficult due to the high-level, complex nature of the subjects.
An example of a theory in psychology I find to be useful even if not universal is Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. Kohlberg himself was quite convinced the stages were universal, and made a few contortions to try to keep it that way. Given that the original theory was formulated based solely on interviews with males in the USA, a limited range of applicability – based largely on culture and to a smaller degree gender, especially as one looks at the higher stages – is more likely. However, the theory is still a good way to understand how people in the USA think about moral issues; it just might not be as good a way to understand how people in other cultures and social settings think.