Why Social Science Is Not Science

There is no real inevitability to the laws of physics (unlike the laws of logic), other than that a certain physical outcome must result under specific material conditions if and only if nothing about physics changes and no real or hypothetical supernatural force intervenes.  Actually verifying scientific factors beyond the veil of perception is impossible; the best human limitations allow is knowing with absolute certainty that events in the external world appear a given way (that they have or lack fallible sensory evidence), that particular phenomena related to physics are logically possible/impossible, and that certain things follow or do not follow from concepts in physics.  There is no metaphysical (logical) necessity or epistemological guarantee that the patterns we observe or hear about, such as those concerning electricity or genetics, will persist days or moments from the present.

This is the real nature of physics.  Science, which hinges on logic as opposed to the other way around and deals only with the natural world, is far from the stronghold of centrality and certainty many foolishly claim it to be.  But social "science" is not even science!  Concerned with how social beings mentally or behaviorally act, psychology (not psychiatry!), economics, politics, and so on do not deal with the laws of nature which govern how physical substances behave.  This does not mean social science has no significance or even lesser importance, but that it lacks even the alleged constancy of the laws of physics.  It is already fallacious to think that a scientific law applying in one instance means it must apply in another, whether another moment of time or another spatial location.  An additional layer of error makes thinking that one person will behave a certain way because another person did/does even more irrational.

At least matter like soil, stone, and water seems inanimate.  Short of some physical or metaphysical factor changing, the same strictly material circumstances would always yield the same deterministic results.  People are conscious beings--or at least I am.  How some people act in no way forces others to act in the same manner, which is a matter of personal intentionality and volition.  Thus, there are no default "laws" of nature that force someone to pursue one logically possible course of action over another.  Going out into the world to observe how a politician acts during an election campaign or how consumers act on Black Friday is not the same as utilizing the scientific method.

That is not to say that science has nothing at all to do with, for example, how a mass of shoppers will behave on Black Friday.  Gravitation still applies, for example; people walking around a store, unless the laws of physics were to change, will still step along the ground, fall to the ground if they leap in the air, and so on.  Physically rough competition over items can produce bodily injuries.  These factors are a matter of science and can be observed in a repeatable manner, as epistemologically fallible as they are.  But whether an individual decides to join a frenzied crowd in a desperate attempt to get select items is not a matter of stable laws of physics, but a matter of individualistic psychology and choice.  Certainly, one can still visually observe if a person remains outwardly calm or becomes aggressive for the sake of materialistic gain, but this dimension of the situation is not within the domain of science whatsoever.

Even if the laws of physics are consistent across time and space (different laws of physics in different times or regions is not illogical, while logical inconsistencies are impossible), there is nothing about physics that makes one person behave in a given way and another person in some other way.  Social phenomena are always individualistic; even in cases of "groupthink" or behaviors engaged in by a horde of people at once, each individual involved must personally commit to the belief or action.  Their involvement is neither logically inescapable nor scientifically pertinent.  In the example of Black Friday, some might assess the matter as if it is an issue of social "science", but the individualistic nature of intention and choice is really dictated by logic and phenomenology, not physics.

An incorrect conclusion to draw would be that anything wrongly considered social "science" is trivial, or that there could never be anything to gain from paying attention to how specific people and their social constructs like economic systems, political regimes, and business endeavors operate.  None of this follows.  In fact, psychology is a subset of phenomenology, which is second only to logic in how foundational it is to the core of reality and knowledge of reality; one's own psychology is also knowable with absolute certainty through rationalistic introspection.  Now, science is incapable of proving anything because that is a characteristic exclusive to the laws of logic as necessary truths.  Being more like science, or what is sometimes called the hard sciences (such as chemistry, which like all categories of true science is ultimately a subcategory of physics), would not elevate social "sciences" like economics to the level of logic, either metaphysically or epistemologically.  There can be no deterministic patterns in how autonomous consumers respond to financial upheavel or in what precisely happens after a coup, among other things.  This does not render science and what is erroneously thought of as social science philosophically opposed.