According to Hasbro Studios and Lauren Faust, the creators of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Friendship is, well, magic. You can see where this theme could be used for morals and growth, right? But does this hold any factual relevance for the “real” world? Science and magic used to be closely tied together. The first thing that comes to my mind is Alchemy.
Is friendship really a science? All of those magical aspects are just waiting to be explained? A condensed version of Thomas Kuhn’s definition of science can be found here or my rephrasing can be read below:
1. Science is “puzzle-solving” that current thoughts are used to solve said puzzles.
2. A situation comes up where the puzzle cannot be solved using the current thoughts and beliefs that are held. It is significant that the problem cannot be solved using these ideas because it suggests those ideas could be wrong. You cannot ignore the problem, but it cannot be solved.
3. This is a “crisis”. The crisis allows for new ideas and approaches to be tried because the ones that were held have been proven “incapable of rising to the task at hand”. There is hope that these new ideas can solve the problem.
4. One of the new ideas works! This causes for the beliefs held about solving the particular problem to change to match this method. “This constitutes the core of the scientific revolution.”
5. This becomes the method of looking at things: it “is just the way things are done”. This process is held in place, until another problem arises.
So how could I possibly apply friendship to these guidelines? Like this:
1. To maintain a friendship you have to resolve problems between you and the other person.
2. Up until this point, whenever you have angered your friend, the issue could be resolved by ignoring the problem. This time when you told him that his ideas were stupid, ignoring his anger didn’t fix the situation. There is a flaw in your method to problem-solving because it is not solving the problem.
3. This is a crisis! You need to make amends, but the previous knowledge you possess in this area is not working. You start trying different things to ease your friend’s anger.
4. You find that giving a simple, heartfelt apology did the trick! You now know from now on instead of letting the anger blow-over to apologize.
5. You automatically employ this proven strategy. This is just the way things are fixed now. It will stay this way until a new problem arises that isn’t fixed with an apology.
There you go! Proof that friendship is a science.
Now, is it actually a science or a pseudoscience? (;
Ashley Kirtman 