IB ToK Human Sciences

1. Human
Sciences
… or why Economics
is hard and Physics
is easy

2. Human Sciences Deal With...
PEOPLE

3. Human Sciences

4. Write down 10 ways in which people
differ from a gram of tungsten

5. HUMAN SCIENCES
Methods of gaining knowledge
• How can we gather
data on human
behaviour?

6. Human Science
So how do we study it?
• Scientific method?
• Asking questions?

7. Problems with experiments
• In order to find out about people, we
have to ask them or observe them.
• Neither of these tasks is easy.

8. Scientific method
Asking the right questions!
• In devising experiments we are
interrogating nature, and we should expect
the view we form also depends on the
questions we ask!

9. Scientific method
• Assumptions - in order to make
generalizations we must assume that all
humans act the same. Is it fair to assume
that humans are rational?

10. The rational human?
• An elderly woman spent a leisurely shopping at the mall. Upon return
to her vehicle, she found four strange males sitting in her car.
Frightened, the woman dropped her shopping bags and drew her
handgun. She told the men that if they did not get out of the car, she
would shoot. The four men ran off quickly, whereupon the lady got
into the car.
• What do you think happened?

11. The rational human?
• Her key, however, would not fit. The woman realized that her car was
the identical one parked a few spaces down. She drove to the police
department and reported the story. The officer on duty laughed
hysterically and pointed to the other end of the counter where four pale
men had reported a hijacking by a mean old lady; no charges were
filed.
• Is this what you imagined?

12. Or can this be considered
rational?
• Two young larcenists in Florida--14 and 15 to be
exact--appeared before Judge Larry Seidlin after
stealing their twenty-fifth car in just two short
years. After the boys were released, they walked
out of the courthouse and realized they did not
have bus fare for a ride home. Promptly, the duo
stole number twenty-six; they crashed the vehicle
into a fence less than an hour later.

13. Hey Man, Stop Asking Me
Questions
• Try to think of 5 • Try to think of 5
questions which questions to which
most people your answer to your
would refuse to friends would differ
answer. from your answer to
• Try to think of 5 your parents.
questions which
people might
answer with a lie.

14. I never wanted you to see me like this!
The PANOPTICON was
proposed as a model prison by
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), a
Utilitarian philosopher and
theorist of British legal reform.
The Panopticon ("all-seeing")
functioned as a round-the-clock
surveillance machine. Its design
ensured that no prisoner could
ever see the 'inspector' who
conducted surveillance from the
privileged central location within
the radial configuration. The
prisoner could never know when
he was being surveilled -- mental
uncertainty that in itself would
prove to be a crucial instrument
of discipline.

15. Panopticon

16. Experimentation
In groups of around 4, try to put an experiment together
for one of the following. List all the problems and possible
errors that may arise:
1) Compare how kind you are vs a rival school.
2) Compare how intelligent you are vs the rival school
3) Find out how people think local derelict land should be
used
4) Find out if people would pay extra tax to increase
spending on health and education

17. Problems of Causation

18. Hume and Causation
• On page 156 of Hume's "Treatise of Human Nature", we find
the paragraph that shook up causation so thoroughly that it
has not recovered to this day.
"Thus we remember to have seen that species of object we
call *FLAME*, and to have felt that species of sensation we
call *HEAT*. We likewise call to mind their constant
conjunction in all past instances. Without any farther
ceremony, we call the one *CAUSE* and the other *EFFECT*,
and infer the existence of the one from that of the other."
• Thus, causal connections according to Hume are product of
observations. Causation is a learnable habit of the mind,
almost as fictional as optical illusions

19. Long-lived
living alone
Single
Cause & Direction
Put as many of the following list of words as Gay
possible into cause & effect pairs. Use an arrow to
show direction. You may use words more than
once. Tall
Good-looking
Rich
Musical
Happy In prison
Educated
Canadian Exercise

20. Use cause and effect to explain
the graph
No. of frogs
in my
garden
Yr1 Yr2 Yr3 Yr4 Yr5 Yr6 Yr 7 Yr8 Yr9 Yr 10 TIME

21. Human v Natural Sciences
• The Human Sciences cannot experiment in
the way that the Natural Sciences can.
• The Human Sciences cannot repeat
experiments.
• The human scientist cannot isolate what his
experiment refers to.
• The human scientist cannot predict with a
great deal of assurance.

22. Human v Natural Sciences
• The hypotheses of the human scientist are
not universal or precise.
• The human scientist does not see ‘reality’ in
the way that a natural scientist can.
• The language of the human sciences is
inherently vague.
• The human scientists statements can have an
effect on what she observes.

23. Human v Natural Sciences
• “The human scientist cannot be
indifferent to his subject matter.”
Steven Pinker