>We should always remember that science is supposed to help understand the world, but the world isn't limited to science. In other words, social aspects of our lives are just as important as learning anything else.

I wouldn't disagree - "the proper study of man is man" is something that seems truer to me as time goes by. Unfortunately, it is also the study most plagued by preconceived notions, and the prevalence of those in the social sciences is what makes me question whether they yet deserve to be called 'sciences' at all. Still, it's something to aspire to...

I suppose I'm tilting at windmills to object to the author using "science" when they evidently mean "the rationalist assumptions of the social sciences", much as I object to claims of a "replication crisis in science" when, again, the data applies to the social sciences.

But then, I evidently have time to tilt at windmills, otherwise I wouldn't be on reddit.

It seems harsh to suggest that the author has little understanding of science, but the alternative charge is one of choosing an excessive title.

Virtually nothing in the article relates to "science" - it is entirely about a certain number of disciplines which call themselves the "social sciences", but which you won't find in the science buildings of a university, and for good reason. In general, the social "sciences" actually exemplify the problem Socrates originally pointed out:

>Socrates made it clear that many people simply believed in things because they have always believed in them, and not because it made rational sense.

Much of social science consists of pet theories about humanity dressed up in the borrowed robes of science - a case of using rationality, or rather rationalisation, to bolster what we believe to be intuitively, or instinctively, or traditionally, or conventionally, to be the case. Hard to do otherwise, when the human mind is still largely a black box into which one can put almost any set of claims.

Unlike actual science, the social sciences neither really discover nor experiment at any level above the elephant's toenail - the shape of the elephant can then be deduced to be almost whatever one prefers. As a result, social science paradigms tend to follow social and political change rather than lead it - the opposite of the relationship between science and technology.