Should Social Science Students be Required to Develop a Strong Background in the Natural Sciences?

Actually, a case can be made, and defended in debate, that there is no genuine education without the sciences.

I was disappointed to read your finding that a student can get degree in anthropology without a minor in biology.

Human dynamics was my field, the cognitive word here bring...'was'. I am constantly disappointed by statements I read by people who should know better and appear not to have even a basic scientific underpinning upon which to draw opinions.

I understand that everyone cannot afford the time and expense to become conversant in every scientific discipline but we could all continue to read what others discover and thereby attain, at least, a superficial familiarity with scientific concepts.

I admire the Jacob Bronowskis and Isaac Asimovs and understand that few can achieve such universal understanding of state-of-the-art science but we could at least familarize ourselves with the findings of the few.

I see far to many students being taught opinions., conclusions by others and not the basics that might allow them to arrive at reasonable conclusions.

It is no accident that the modern college degree is less than equivelant to the High School GED of years past. I do not doubt that if an 11th grade Technische Hochschuele, student these are students not destined for university in Germany, if tested, could be considered a junior or even a senior in a typical American university.

This, alone, if accurate, bodes not well for our future. The education in schools with a religious bent offer virtually no education, rather they off only more immersion in the particular dogma of the religious sect involved.

It's sad, really; we do this to ourselves.

I don't know about doing it as a requirement for an undergrad. I think it would be a great requirement for a graduate degree.

I am an historian, and some of the more thought-provoking historical ideas of late have come from the sciences. Jared Diamond's Gun Germs and Steel is the most famous example, but not the only one.

I think that historians have a tough time dealing with ideas like these because they come from such a totally different set of presumptions. Much (and in fact most) of history comes from an angle that prioritizes human decision making either at the group or individual level. So when someone like Diamond comes along and says that environment is destiny, historians don't really know how to react.

I don't agree that "scientific" history is ever going to replace human history, written with the belief that humans, to at least a certain degree, choose their own fate. One of the ways that Marxist scholarship positioned itself as scientific was by taking destiny almost completely out of human hands.

I think in the end that there are a lot of limits to what science, either in the sense of natural sciences or the more scientific side of social science is going to explain about the human past. This is why I think that history will remain in the Humanities departments at most universities, and rightly so.

But historians are closing their mind to a lot of great ideas and ways of thinking about the world by ignoring the natural sciences.

Adds: I guess in looking over my response that I introduced history as a social science and then claimed it was in the humanities. I guess I see it as being a little bit of both. In some other countries and in some US universities, it is included as a social science.

Quite. I find social science scholars even greater enemies of evolutionary theory than fundamentalist Christan's. " Fundies " are mislead by their total lack of education in evolutionary theory. Many social scientists seem ideologically opposed to the implications of evolutionary theory. Not long ago I was asked to audit a biological anthro class that is in the biology department of a local community college. Complaints had been made by some erudite students about the instructors methods and command of the material. This man stood in front of a class of impressionable undergraduates and told them, " genes have nothing to do with behavior; all behavior is learned. " Needless to say, he was reprimanded. This is my argument; social science needs to cut lose the ideology and become evolutionarily informed in a modern sense.

Sociobiology is an established biological discipline, so, I do not have a " take ", but as an ethologist I use and contribute to sociobiological theory.

Evolutionary psychology is a social science that has some promise, ( all its start-up tenets were evolutionary biology's findings ) but has Pangloss-ian problems with psychological adaptions.

Fortunately, as an ethologist interested in Canid behavior, I only am philosophically concerned with these issues. Which takes more than enough of my time.

I think so, yeah.

To Jon:

I think that your experience with the bio anthro class may have just been due to some bias on the instructors part. That's not what I've been taught at all. My professors have really emphasized that the nature vs. nurture debate is extremely flawed because it implies that it's either one or the other when in fact they work hand-in-hand.

Education is about challenging your perceptions and striking to achieve new parameters of understanding, right? Rote, sloyd, deductive reasoning, or the empirical method of study. So which school of thought best suits your particular style of objective learning? Personally, I am of the old "hands on, hold tight, and sphincter clenched" school, myself.....but that is the best way to teach Nursing....interaction rather than book learning.

yes, somethings naturally go hand in hand and some things directly and all indirectly effecteach other. Without knowing the people and events happening in an area then how can you know, begen to guess or predict what has, is, and will happen to that invironment. This doesn't just go for studying people it also applies to wildlife and weather.

Yes, at least enough to comprehend the language in scholarly scientific journals, and to interpret scientific data, which would also include a little bit of mathematics and statistics.

A well rounded education is always desirable.

YES...

and vice versa!