Objective and Subjective Science

There are no better terms available to describe this difference between the approach of the natural and the social sciences than to call the former 'objective' and the latter 'subjective'.

 Reading Nature is Like Interpreting the Bible

An experiment in nature, like a text in the Bible, is capable of different interpretations, according to the preconceptions of the interpreter.

 Objectively Viewing the Work of Anthropology

Its [the anthropological method] power to make us understand the roots from which our civilization has sprung, that it impresses us with the relative value of all forms of culture, and thus serves as a check to an exaggerated valuation of the standpoint of our own period, which we are only too liable to consider the ultimate goal of human evolution, thus depriving ourselves of the benefits to be gained from the teachings of other cultures and hindering an objective criticism of our own work.

 It's Okay for Scientists to Have Biases

...why does it matter what biases and emotional predispositions scientists bring to their studies, so long as they are scrupulously honest and other people with different proclivities check their results? Presumably no one would argue that the conservative view on the sum of fourteen and twenty-seven differs from the liberal view, or that the mathematical function that is its own derivative is the exponential in the northern hemisphere but some other function in the southern. Any regular peri...