Jared Diamond

1. Please describe the background of the dispute between Dr. Samuel Huntington and Dr. Serge Lang.
Huntington is a teacher in the social sciences and Lang is in the natural sciences. Huntington wanted to join the NAS which Lang is a member of but Lang did not want him to because he does not believe the soft sciences should be mixed with the hard sciences or even be considered science in the first place.
2. How did Lang respond to Huntington’s “pseudo mathematics?”
Lang responded by creating a petition that would forbid him from being accepted by the NAS.
3. What aspects of the dispute between Lang and Huntington are “political?” How does the author, Jared Diamond, feel about “Academic Freedom?”
It was political because the NAS worked to give scientific advice to the government and because Huntington supported the efforts of Vietnam and studied political instability so Land thought he was too right wing. Jared Diamond feels that academic freedom is unfair because insiders of academics can raise whatever issues they please about it but outsiders cannot.
4. Why does the NAS exist? Why does this make that attacks against Huntington seem peculiar?
The NAS exists to provide scientific advice to the government before they do anything and it is peculiar because that is exactly what Huntington is doi9ng and yet the NAS is using it against him.
5. Why does Diamond find fault in the traditional perceptions of the hard sciences?
He finds fault because they are stereotyped as being in a lab mixing chemicals when in fact many different things which never end up in a lab can still coont as natural sciences.
6. Why are soft sciences difficult to study?
They are hard to study because their variables are not easily controlled and they can never truly be repeated.
7. How did the NAS need to change in the early 1970s?
They needed to start admitting social scientists because the government needed their advise about thing like the Vietnam war.
8. What are the problems in “operationalizing” a concept?
It is not always clear what method should be used to measure a phenomenon like social instability.
9. Briefly describe how Diamond illustrates operationalizing in:
•Mathematics
A number and counting system.
•Chemistry
Identifying some property of a substance of interest, or of a related substance into which the first can be converted. The property must be one that can be measured, like weight, or the light the substance absorbs, or the amount of neutralizing agent it consumes.
•Ecology
Computing different aspects of an environment like height of trees or volume of a marsh and creating an index of all aspects combined into one number.
•Psychology
A questionnaire developed from widely agreed upon statements.
10. What were Huntington’s operationalized concepts that provoked the wrath of Lang?
They were economic well-being, political instability, and social and economic modernization.
11. Why is the task of operationalizing more difficult and less exact in the soft sciences? Why does it lead to the ridicule of the soft sciences?
Because certain aspects of social sciences cannot easily be defined and measured like emotions, and this leads to ridicule because the concepts being studied tend to be familiar ones that all of us fancy we're experts on.
12. Why does Diamond believe that Lang might be ignorant of the measurements taken by social scientists like Huntington?
This is because he believes his question ''How does Huntington measure things like social frustration?'' would be the same as asking how quantities are measured in math.
13. Does Diamond believe the labels associated with the sciences be replaced? Explain.
Yes, he believes soft sciences should be called hard and hard sciences easy because the soft sciences are much more intellectually challenging.
14. Does Diamond believe the soft sciences to be more valuable than hard sciences? Do you agree? Explain.
He seems to suggest that the soft sciences are more important but I do not agree because while it is true that understanding each other is important, the natural world is what caused our existence in the first place and I believe that not understanding it will make it harder for us to understand human nature which is a part of the natural world in a way. Therefore I believe that both sciences are equally important.