Hard Versus Soft Science
The ease of quantification is one of the features used to distinguish hard and soft sciences from each other. Hard sciences are often considered to be more scientific, rigorous, or accurate. In some social sciences such as sociology, specific accurate data are difficult to obtain, either because laboratory conditions are not present or because the issues involved are conceptual but not directly quantifiable.
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Famous quotes containing the words hard, soft and/or science:
“Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that’s hard for a puritan to understand.”
—Günther Grass (b. 1927)
“Though now in her old age, in her young age
She had been beautiful in that old way
That’s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone,
And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all
But soft beauty and indolent desire.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“We have not given science too big a place in our education, but we have made a perilous mistake in giving it too great a preponderance in method in every other branch of study.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)