Tom Lehrer on Sociology

Next they'll try to tell us that psychology and (scoff) economics are sciences. RIDICULOUS!

i am a sociologist and sociology definitely is science. a social science. but there are a lot of people who don't think that social science is science. and they are to some extent right, but that's a very narrow definition of science (which excludes economy, psychology, law or medicine).

but i agree that sociology today is over mathematized and gets too tangled up in it's own jargon. and i love the song too.
5 stars

its

human behavior is kind of predictable, results may vary therefore

of all the years of listening to dr demento and such, this is the first time for me hearing tom speak!

after years of owning his greatest hits album, this is the first time for me seeing him

science is the study of the world around us however Sociology, is the study of people so in a way is a science i suppose.

its definitely science
he was just making fun of social scientists, particularly sociologists, in the 60s for the lengths they went to trying to get their fields of study recognized as a science

I believe the thesis but the song isn't funny

Alchemy at least is fairly apt (and probably even more so 40 years ago): they're fields which are to a greater or lesser degree suffering from untested theories from armchair workers being taken as gospel, but moving towards a more accurate system.

However, it's rather unfair to lump all the social sciences together: for example, psychology and linguistics are both far more rigorous than economics (fuck, let's face it, most of the time psychology is more rigorous than pharmacology)