human science tok essay

TOK Human Sciences Essay:

When compared to the natural science, it is difficult to consider the human science scientific. Defend or refute this statement.

Introduction:
There have always been debates on whether human science is considered scientific, especially when it is compared to natural sciences. In order to answer this question, I should first define the terms – science, natural science and human science. I define science as a systematic enterprise that organizes knowledge in testable explanations and predictions that proves that a certain thing is true about the universe. Natural science can be defined as organized knowledge that are measured by quantitative data towards the natural world using scientific methods. Human science can be defined as the study of the society and the relationships between individuals. It is the study of a human being’s knowledge and its interrelationships with other species, studying human phenomenon.
The essay will compare using two areas of knowing which are natural sciences and the human sciences and analyze using the three ways of knowing, Perception, Reasoning and Language.

Human science: no clear answer, quantitative, human error.
Main body:
‘If it 's social it can 't be scientific!" (J.D. Halloran (1998).1
If science is defined to have certain proof to support their statements, human sciences would not be considered a science because of its lack of proof to its theories; while natural sciences can be proven by experiments: by the ways of knowing like perception, reasoning, and language used in scientific reports.

We all heard the idiom, ‘Seeing is believing’. In the natural science, we can perceive by seeing in order to justify our beliefs. In chemistry, the reaction of phenolphthalein2 is a good example. Phenolphthalein’s original color is colorless, it remains colorless in acidic solutions and turns to pink in basic solutions, if the concentration of the indicator is particularly strong, it can appear purple. Therefore, you can see that a chemical reaction has occur, and by using perception, a natural scientist can observe and see how the reaction has change throughout the experiment, therefore can be a valid source to justify results.
On the contrary, in the human sciences, it is more difficult to have a clear answer to a certain hypothesis, for example in psychology, Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment 19613 aimed to test whether aggression can be acquired by imitation by testing to see if children would mimic the aggressive behavior of adults.
The experiment is tested through observation of how aggressive the children are after watching a video of aggression acted out by an adult. The researchers concluded that the findings supports where children are likely to model behaviors such as aggression through the process of observing a model.

However in the findings, unlike the experiments in the natural science cannot be repeated to obtain the same results, as humans are complex organisms that react differently as individuals. The conclusion of this experiment are only based on one sample of findings, this does not proves that all children model violent behaviors. The findings are lacking generalizability – one single sample is not representative of the world’s population. Hence, using perception in human sciences will tell us that the facts are not reliable when compared to natural sciences. This is because what we perceive may relate to us on an emotional level when we observe samples, some researchers may perceive differently due to what they feel when they observe, which then can lead to different results with each sample.

Reasoning, is used in order to understand how our world functions, the relationship between variables. In the natural sciences, we can use reasoning to know how one element affects one another by using scientific methods. Photosynthesis4 is a process of plants converting light energy from the sun into chemical energy that can be used to build their own organic molecules and synthesize food source. By using reason as a way of knowing, if there is no sunlight, then plants will then cannot function themselves, in this way we can see there is a logical relationship between the interactions in each variable and can be observed and established. Whereas in human sciences, the relationship between variables may not be clear, since there are too many confounding variables, therefore fallacies in logic can occur leading reasoning may rather hard to establish a definite conclusion comparing to the natural science.

The use of language also differs in natural and human sciences. Referring back to the example of photosynthesis, the process of this has already been proven, the use of language in this is very valid and there are evidence such as quantitative data to prove that photosynthesis is a natural cycle of autotrophs.
Whereas in the human sciences, the use of language is vague, using words like ‘may’ and ‘could’ and can only supports a certain statement or theory but it can never be proven.
The Conformity Experiment that was conducted by Asch (1951)5 aimed to test whether the social pressure from a majority group could affect a person’s conformity. Asch concluded that people conformed due to social pressure.

However, Perrin and Spencer (1980)6 conduct the same experiment twenty years after, the results were different from Asch’s, where it shows that no participant shows a correlation between the social pressure and individualism. The language used here used words like ‘apparently’7 in Asch’s conclusion, which shows a strongly invalid point, therefore the findings from Asch in 1951 is not possible to prove all individuals think the same way.

Conclusion:
I believe that the human sciences are not to be considered scientific, based on the ways of knowing. We can see that there are too many undefined variables and too many results that cannot be generalized in human sciences, while natural sciences not only have proven theories to create facts and can be perceived with our senses but also can reflect their scientific integrity in language.

Bibliography: http://www.chemguide.co.uk/physical/acidbaseeqia/indicators.html Bandura, A., Ross, D. & Ross, S.A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575-82.

http://www.le.ac.uk/oerresources/media/ms7500/mod1unit2/page_03.htm

McLeod, S. A. (2008). Asch Experiment - Simply Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html

Perrin, S. & Spencer, C. (1980) The Asch effect: a child of its time? Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 32, 405-406.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/bobo-doll.html

Bibliography: http://www.chemguide.co.uk/physical/acidbaseeqia/indicators.html Bandura, A., Ross, D. & Ross, S.A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models.  Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575-82. http://www.le.ac.uk/oerresources/media/ms7500/mod1unit2/page_03.htm McLeod, S. A. (2008). Asch Experiment - Simply Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html Perrin, S. & Spencer, C. (1980) The Asch effect: a child of its time? Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 32, 405-406. http://www.simplypsychology.org/bobo-doll.html