“Although blinding with science can be used in any argument, many will recognize the special domain of this fallacy as the subjects which like to consider themselves as sciences, but are not.
Science deals with things from atoms to stars at a level where individual differences do not matter. The scientist talks of ‘all’ rolling bodies or whatever, and formulates general laws to test by experiment.
The trouble with human beings is that, unlike rolling bodies, the individual differences do matter. Often, again unlike rolling bodies, they want to do different things.
Although this might prevent us from being scientific about human beings, it does not stop us pretending to be so. What we do here is to add the word ‘science’ onto the study, giving us ‘economic science’, ‘political science’ and ‘social science’. Then
we dress them in that white coat of scientific language, and hope that no one will notice the difference.”
-- Madsen Pirie, “How To Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic”
“Although blinding with science can be used in any argument, many will recognize the special domain of this fallacy as the subjects which like to consider themselves as sciences, but are not.
Science deals with things from atoms to stars at a level where individual differences do not matter. The scientist talks of ‘all’ rolling bodies or whatever, and formulates general laws to test by experiment.
The trouble with human beings is that, unlike rolling bodies, the individual differences do matter. Often, again unlike rolling bodies, they want to do different things.
Although this might prevent us from being scientific about human beings, it does not stop us pretending to be so. What we do here is to add the word ‘science’ onto the study, giving us ‘economic science’, ‘political science’ and ‘social science’. Then we dress them in that white coat of scientific language, and hope that no one will notice the difference.”
-- Madsen Pirie, “How To Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic”