If you look at eg the history of scientific racism you find a lot of anthropologists, sociologists & philosophers not being very scientific
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You get a lot of biologists & physicians too, obv, and its only comparatively recently that the disciplines have distinguished themselves.
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So, it can be hard to tell in the 19th century what ppl were actually doing &identify individuals as natural scientists or social scientists
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They certainly called it 'science' a lot but I'm not sure we'd recognise it as such now. Emile Zola considered himself to be doing science.
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He saw his novels as an experiment in which he'd place characters & see what they did & then draw conclusions abt human nature from this.
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Of course, scientists looked askance at this claim even then.
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But I haven't studied 19th century history since undergrad so am limited. But there was a definite tendency to ascribe bad ideas to science.
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When often what ppl were doing was observing grps in society &coming up with moralistic ideas abt race & gender which is more social science
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Their conclusions not today's social scientists' fault but neither do they get to dump all the bad stuff at the door of science & blame it.
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This is so True. The history of the field of psychology is not a pretty one. Educational? Yes. Nice? No.
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Point is, it wasn't science. It was scientists. There's a difference. The two get conflated a lot.
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like Spencer and social darwinism.
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