Idiomatic Terms

Hard science and soft science are idiomatic terms used to compare different scientific fields and ways of thinking. While hard science is science fiction that is characterized by an emphasis on scientific detail and accuracy, soft sciences describes humanitarian, literary and social sciences. Hard sciences rely more on data, numbers and graphs while soft sciences uses ideas derived from sociology and fiction. For me, I would characterize myself on the hard sciences side of the spectrum. Because my brain functions in more of a way that relates to hard sciences, relying on quantitative standards and attention to detail, this has had a large impact on my reading and writing. Having this trait causes me to take more of a puzzle solving and problem solving approach to reading and writing. Instead of focusing primarily on character and emotion, I like to use specific numbers, data and evidence when writing and reading. When reading, I pick apart the text and search for both inaccuracies and accuracies.

As a hard science thinker, I feel it have caused me to struggle more with reading and writing. I enjoy subjects that teach about mathematical equations, economics, numbers and problem solving rather than subjects like English which focus on literature and interpretation. Because of this, I need to adopt soft science characteristics and be able to value and interpret text and literature. For example, our last prompt, which was discussing the essay “Ways of Seeing” and the ways people’s seeing has changed, caused me to take more of a soft science approach. This essay focuses more on sociology and phycology, studying society and the way people think. While I still incorporated some hard science characteristics, such as pecking at the inaccuracies, I mainly focused on critical and interpretive ideas. Overall, my brain works in more of an analytical way, focusing on accuracy, detail and numbers. This has definitely had an effect on my ways of writing