Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen on Nostr: This segregation of #science into "hard" and "soft" is not wholly fallacious, because ...

This segregation of #science into "hard" and "soft" is not wholly fallacious, because there is a sliding scale of probability which applies to all scientific (and indeed all academic) endeavors: certain conclusions of science are more certain than others, and ideally it should be possible to estimate the degree of uncertainty. Scientific models backed by centuries of repeatable observations and experiments which always yield basically the same results are "harder" than models based on fewer observations. Newer disciplines are invariably "softer" than established ones, though the same principle of ultimate uncertainty attaches to all the sciences: ANY science, even the "hardest" of them like #physics, is subject to the uncertainty of the future. One can never know what new information might turn up that's incompatible with established scientific understanding.

(cont'd)