There are also other cases where the phenomena in natural sciences cannot always be explained using the empirical method. This arises when the means available to scientists are limited. An example of this is the theory behind the Big Bang – impossible for scientists to test with the means currently available to them. However, as always, scientists are trying to find new methods to overcome obstacles and the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva (the world’s largest particle accelerator) is a good example of this, as an attempt to recreate conditions similar to those “at the beginning of time”. These opportunities come to scientists once in a blue moon as it is very difficult to find funding and materials to carry out such experiments. Help from one or more governments is often needed.
Seeing as the empirical method seems to work well for natural sciences, why is it not used for human sciences such as geography, history and psychology, the latter being the area of knowledge that I will be using to compare with natural sciences whilst investigating the uses of empirical evidence in each of these areas? As I will explain, there are a limited number of cases where it has in fact been used within the area of human sciences.
We must first ask ourselves why empirical evidence is, more often than not, avoided when it comes to investigating various areas of human sciences? Firstly, as I explained earlier on, the empirical method uses reasoning and perception as ways of knowing. The human sciences are all about the ways of knowing that are much dependant on human behaviour – language and, in particular, emotion. Psychology relies entirely on emotion.
Secondly, there is the issue of being able to reproduce the circumstances and conditions that are to be experimented. In history, it would be absurd and impossible to recreate early twentieth century Europe to investigate the causes of the First World War. This is simply not feasible. Because of animal behaviour and intelligence, it is much easier to carry out an experiment in the natural sciences when the animal does not know it’s being used for experiments and hence doesn’t adapt its behaviour. Many experiments that treat humans like animals would be ethically questionable and so ethics are the third reason explaining why empirical methods are not generally used in the area of human sciences.
However, there are always exceptions, and experiments on the human mind have indeed been carried out, despite the fact that they may well have had to face criticism following them, involving ethics and morals. To demonstrate, I will use the example of the Milgram experiment. This experiment, carried out in the 60s, consisted in putting two people in separate rooms; one the tester and the other being tested. The tester was to ask the other questions and whenever they got one wrong, the tester was to send an increasing electric shock to the other one. Or so they thought. The ones being tested were actually actors and they were to merely express their pain orally whenever they were shocked. In 65% of cases, the testers increased the voltage enough to send a shock of 450V. 300V is easily enough to kill an adult but, because a man in a white coat was telling them to carry on, they did so. The results were shocking and have been used to explain the mentality behind criminals and, in particular, terrorists. Most will assume that you need to be insane to a certain extent to walk into a public place with explosives strapped to your chest. It turns out you only need to be asked. Such an experiment is obviously very useful. But at what cost? The questions involving ethics in such an experiment are numerous and hugely complicated. Obviously, the testers would have been devastated to find out that they were capable of killing a fellow human being under instruction and this makes this experiment extremely questionable. Another such example is the experiment carried out by James Watson, a Noble Prize winner that, using the scientific method, claimed that Africans were intellectually inferior to whites. This raises the question as to whether these experiments really need to be carried out or whether they should even be allowed to be carried out, yet again, relating back to the ethical issues. This experiment also asks the question whether Dr Watson allowed his emotions to take over his reasoning to form this conclusion.
History and geography are examples where a certain amount of empirical evidence is used because, despite the fact that the scientific method is not used, they use a lot of so-called facts and evidence. And then, using this, historians put forwards opinions and arguments using the facts and evidence they have collected as back-up. This is an example where perception and language are used as reasoning to back up an idea that has come from emotion and hence using all the areas of knowing.
To conclude, it is possible to use the empirical evidence in some cases in both the natural and human sciences. Having said that, the empirical method is much more widely used in the natural sciences because it uses perception and reasoning as ways of knowing and these are futile in the realms of human sciences such as psychology. The human sciences can also use a certain amount of empirical evidence but is hard to use the empirical method when emotions and language play a big part.
Bibliography
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Wikipedia, Scientific Method, Available : , (accessed 24/09/09).
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Scientific American, Lisa Stein, October 25, 2007, , viewed on 08 October 2009
Wikipedia, Scientific Method, Available : , (accessed 24/09/09).
Scientific American, Lisa Stein, October 25, 2007, , viewed on 08 October 2009