In science, a theory is a coherent set of beliefs about how some phenomenon works that constrains your expectation about what you will observe to some subset of what you might observe. In the humanities and in most of social science, and apparently in nursing, it is the other way round: a theory is a coherent set of beliefs about how some phenomenon works that constrains your actual observations to lie within what the theory says they will be. This is why there are so many theories of the same thing, and no-one seems to care whether any of them are true, or even think that is a sensible question to ask.
This is the best formulation of this class of criticisms of the social sciences that I have ever read.
It doesn't indicate that people who don't participate in fields where expectations are clouded by dogma are any more virtuous, of course. They're simply less likely to get away with it.
I'm currently writing an essay for one of my classes, 'Theoretical Foundations of Nursing.' I'm about the most 'gong-si' class I've ever taken. (That is a Chinese term for 'shit talking,' which is my boyfriend's favourite term for any field that gets into arguments over definitions, has concepts that don't correspond to any empirical phenomena, is based on ideology, etc.)
The essay involves analyzing a clinical situation (in this case a 55-year-old recently divorced, recently unemployed man, admitted to the psychiatric ward with major depression and suicidal ideation) using a theory (in this case, Roy's Adaptation Model). Done. The next step involves finding criticisms with the model...and despite the fact that I've been complaining about this class and its non-empirical nature all semester, I seem unable to come up with specific criticisms of what this nursing theory is missing.
Which is what I need your help for, because LessWrong is the best community ever when it comes to specific criticisms.
Here is a very brief overview of Roy's Adaptation Theory:
Now my question is, what is a specific criticism I can make of this particular theory in general...not "your definitions aren't specific enough" or "the whole field of nursing theory isn't reductionist enough", but something that this kind of theory should have but doesn't. Any ideas?