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My wife got a high end Ph.D. in sociology:
E.g., two of her profs were President,
American Sociological Society. Well, high
end sociology tries to be a science of
groups of people. Well, the theory of that field can start
with a statement, observation, claim such
as "It’s a hundred years later and we still
imitate Europeans and ape European culture
when we want to pretend to be rich and
upper-class." I can believe that some or much of that is
true! E.g., way back there when I wanted
to learn to cook so I could serve
something good to guests, I went for
European cooking, sure, especially French
cooking. Much of that cooking is still
like the first class dinner scene from the
movie Titanic! Even now, I'd like to
serve guests something from Vienna coffee
house cakes -- some of which look
spectacular, even if actually they don't
taste better than good American apple pie,
warm, with good vanilla ice cream! So, the statement seems clear enough,
might seem like good insight, maybe it's
obviously true, etc. Still, it turns out,
it is usually not easy actually to
validate such a statement just from data,
e.g., survey data, and associated
statistics. More generally, literature,
i.e., belle lettre, is awash in
statements that maybe one would like to
validate with data and statistics as
sociology science but which in practice is
tough to do. But for belle lettre, there is a way
out! First, f'get about asking if the statement
is true in some scientific or statistical
sense. Second, instead, call the statement art
as in the definition "the communication,
interpretation of human experience,
emotion". Then look at the statement as
an example of such "communication,
interpretation", that is, just see if the
statement does communicate some emotions,
impressions, feelings, beliefs, behaviors,
suspicions, etc. of some people, maybe
even some strange people with no attempt
to consider average, most, or all
people. First, then with a lot of such examples of
belle lettre, can accumulate a catalog
of possibilities for people, call it a
collection of Bayesian statistics
priors, as first cut guesses when meet a
new person. Second, if some of those claims, etc.,
from literature seem to describe ones
self, then can start to believe that are
not alone, not the Lone Ranger, not a
total anomaly different from everyone
else. Uh, I wish my various literature teachers,
at least one of them, would have made
those points to me! |
Ahem... :) "Apple pie was brought to the colonies by the English, the Dutch, and the Swedes during the 17th and 18th centuries." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_pie