Please! Perhaps it time to admit that sociology should be pluralistically split rather than monolithically lumped. I found Hillsman's comments ahistorical and naive. She could as well have been a shill for the scientism (Ogburn, Bernard, Lundberg) that colonized the discipline in the 1920s and 1930s (See Robert Bannister's "Sociology and Scientism").

The discipline became a battleground as a new generation of converts to scientific sociology eventually routed the heirs of the first generation (including the likes Sorokin, McIver, Ellwood, Blumer), stigmatizing them as “inadequately professional”(Buxton and Turner 1992:379). These new professionals then moved quickly to extend their hegemony over the entire discipline. That imperialism unraveled in the 1960s.

Sociology as a STEM discipline is a retrograde neo-positivism. Hillsman's fundamentalist diatribe is a minority position today. It is time to acknowledge that sociology is pluralistic, with scientific and humanistic factions.

I hear you on the pluralism, Monte, and would be the first to celebrate this historical development in sociology. My point is simply that the social sciences offer a wonderful setting for teaching and learning scientific thinking (and interpretive thinking, and humanistic thinking, and critical thinking). And, that our discipline has *some* claim to science funding and science teaching. Is any sociologist really empowered when congress and the courts further de-fund and de-legitimize sociology as science (hegemony is over! imperialism unraveled!)? More personally, my most ambitious and critical work has long been supported by the national science infrastructure (it is hard to imagine finishing data collection and analysis for Locked Out without the NSF). I'm just hoping my students (both science-y and otherwise) have a shot at the same opportunities.

Well said, Chris. It's too bad that you didn't write the defense. Sally's column is heavy-handed,paranoid,tone deaf, and suffers from a century-old physics envy. The example that got Sally stirred up seems rather parochial and insignificant. The social sciences have numerous categories of eligibility under most general education curricula. To limit "Scientific Investigations" to one natural science course so that social science can capture some of that market share seems both imperialistic and disrespectful of the natural sciences and their limited access to undergraduates.

Speaking personally here, but I think it is also deeply important to push the notion of "science" past its most narrow version. At its core, science is about a concern for stating how we know what we claim to know. That doesn't necessarily mean quantification and it doesn't necessarily mean a search for general laws -- but it can. The social sciences confront these issues more directly than others. That doesn't mean "physics envy," rather it can impart a great deal of wisdom to students who fetishize the natural sciences at a time when even the natural sciences are having to grapple with theories that may or may not be directly testable (as in macro-oriented physics) or with uncertainty (as in micro-oriented physics). Personally I think it is time to reconsider the humanistic implications of science, and the scientific role of the human sciences in the way that an earlier generation of scholars, like Jacob Bronowski, did so well.

Thanks Monte and Joe. These are fundamental issues that should emerge front-and-center in our core theory and methods courses. In my grad training, Chas Camic would introduce Durkheim, Marx, and Weber to students by drawing out and contrasting their understandings of science (and religion as well). These days, I'm getting more exposure to (non-social) science talks and I'm impressed by the range of creative responses to the sorts of big hairy questions and problems that Joe mentions (in physics, yes, but also in plant pathology, chemical engineering, computer science, microbiology...). For this sociologist, the take-home message is that we may be distinctive on lots of dimensions, but we are not alone...

I've worked out that the proportion of correctness in Sally's idea that sociology should be a STEM discipline is as follows: EP = (\tfrac{3}{4}+\tfrac{1}{6}-1)/(2\times\tfrac{1}{6}-1)=\tfrac{1}{8}=12.5%

Prof H

Many of those in college, and many of those who have graduated college are not as smart as they think they are. None of you are all knowing beings in ALL the disciplines in a university setting, and you don't have supermanistic powers either, so get over it. All the majors I went to school with had my highest respect, not one over the other, and each one was able to complement the other, either directly in the field of life, or if changing up the major for a Masters, PhD, or any of those integrated into the field of life. All of them, whether it be music, art, engineering, psychology, sociology, statistics, biology, teaching, you name it. Why is it so hard just to be proud of your minority brothers and sisters who have graduated? Sure, maybe they were in a different field of study, but one thing you have in common is that both have worked hard to finish something, something that one is passionate about, while the other is passionate about something else. Both might have had life struggles along the way, debt, and who knows what, but, they finished, for what? To be belittled by others? That's wrong. What I see is the non-degreed people of the world have done a marvelous job of splitting graduates of college up and having them fight amongst each other while they can simply slip under the radar. In the end, there are only 27% of ALL U.S. citizens, of ALL ages, ALL races, ALL genders, and ALL majors that have at least a Bachelors degree, 10% a Masters and 1% a PhD FROM a regionally accredited/internationally recognized university (Census). Obviously the majority of citizens have nothing, or they might have a trade, certificates, or an Associates. That's not bad either, but there is a lot more work to put in to getting an Bachelors done, Masters, and PhD. I have heard non-grads saying they deserve as much (the same) or more than someone who has graduated college, and pretty much "f your degree, so what". You should be like brothers and sisters and be supportive of one another, and others who are interested, rather than turning your backs on one another, turning off others, and get united. I guarantee non-degreed looks out for non-degreed the same as gangs look out for gangs, military looks out for military, etc. Note: There are graduates in the military, and they do look out for one another on a rank system for military, and degrees. Quit squabbling and saying this and that and blah blah blah. If you do not see how each field/discipline can be complemented by the other, then you are not all knowing and fail to see it, where I and many others understand it perfectly. Regardless, you are still my brothers and sisters, and I will do my part to look out for each and every one of you.

*I know, too long, and forgive grammar, not writing a thesis, but ya get the gist