Petition to stop using the phrases “hard sciences” and “soft sciences.” Different fields of science shouldn’t be pitted against each other. A hierarchy of importance shouldn’t exist among scientific fields.
Instead use phrases like “physical sciences,” “social sciences,” “life sciences,” “medical sciences,” etc. You better get across what field you’re actually talking about and don’t put down anyone’s work in the process! It’ll take time to make advances in interdisciplinary research, let’s start by leveling the field to make it possible
Honestly what's wild is that the more we discover about "hard" sciences like physics, the more nebulous and confusing things get.
We still consider them hard sciences because we believe there's underlying, unseen principles which would cause things to make sense (like the theory of relativity did), but can't that kind of ruleset apply to any science?
The thing is, science is always going to be slightly nebulous and not always be perfect, because it's in the nature of discovery that when you find something new, you won't understand it right away. There may be a day we have a level of understanding of economics, psychology, or sociology where those fields have a level of accuracy that is even greater than that of quantum physics.
TLDR all science is "soft" and scientists who look down on other sciences need to get over themselves? Also OP is right, let's categorize sciences by descriptive names rather than an outdated binary scale.
