According to a canon that developed unchallenged for a very long time, academic research exists in fields of knowing and proof. It is identified most memorably and with the greatest severity in the physical sciences, which establish facts on the basis of observation, very often extending to empirical experiment, where circumstances are carefully created and controlled, and tests are reliably designed around an unsolved question. This method is reflected in the social sciences, which describe, quantify and model social phenomena - economic or behavioural - without experiment but with the same code of measurable rigour. The humanities, which are by and large non-quantitative and definitely present a greater kinship with the creative arts in their cultural subject matter and often in the ideological spirit of their contentions, also cleave closely to the motif of knowing and proof. Disciplines like philosophy, history and languages interpret and argue with the support of sources; a thesis in the field is held to be defensible when its conclusions and methods withstand the contrary argument.
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Robert H. Nelson (2004) studied this question.