[bmitc]

I am not a big fan of these distinctions. In fact, they're completely backwards when you look at it from the perspective of difficulty of the sciences. The so-called hard sciences, like physics and chemistry, are far easier than biology, ecology, psychology, etc. These difficulties should not mean that they are lesser as implied by the normal usage of "hard" vs "soft" sciences.

> empirical in nature and has results that can be reproduced and confirmed independently

All sciences conform to this. It's just that reproducing results in physics and chemistry is much, much easier and feasible than in the other sciences.

[trashtester]

"hard" doesn't refer to the difficulty level of "hard sciences", but the solidity of the evidence. Basically the same as "hard" evidence in a court case (video footage of a murder, procured from a trusted source, with witnesses and murder weapon intact, as opposed to mere circumstancial evidence).

[bmitc]

I know they don’t and didn’t say they did. However, there are implications (if you’ve ever worked with physicists or even engineers you’ll feel the results of these implications), so I suggested that if you do look at it from a different perspective, then you get what I said.

I just don’t think they’re useful terms. In many ways, physics and chemistry are the low hanging fruit of science.