Think of society as split into two sets of institutions. One set we'll call 'operations' - this consists of agriculture, industry, engineering, the natural sciences, etc - and the other set we'll call 'commentary' - this consists of the social sciences, economics, media, etc.
'Operations' is ordered according to 'operational concepts', concepts used in the organization of activities that transform the material world. 'Commentary' is ordered according to non-operational concepts, they're only used in interpreting social phenomena.
'Operations' is subject to compartmentalization, so that nobody in operations has a complete pictures of how things work. This is achieved by switching from operational concepts to commentary's concepts when they talk about outside organizations, society in general, etc.
What having these two sets of institutions achieves, then, is ensuring that society never achieves reflexivity, it never can fully represent itself to itself operationally. 'Operations' never comes to encompass the whole of society. 'Commentary' exists to ensure this outcome.
The non-operational concepts of 'Commentary' are fictions. They exist solely in the circular world of (parts of) academia and the media, maintained by the demands of providing constant commentary on events, while simultaneously ensuring compartmentalization in 'Operations'.
This isn't simply a case of 'STEM good, social sciences (etc) bad'. Most of what STEM people typically believe, when they make statements of belief (as opposed to just doing their work), actually comes from 'Commentary'. There's some operational work in the social sciences. Etc.
Nonetheless, I think this crude model is useful. I find myself mentally filing concepts as 'operations' vs 'commentary'. The key is to ask yourself, 'Could somebody actually use this concept for something other than writing an essay, having an argument, etc?'
I should link this back to the social stack thread, since the idea is that the liberal inversion of the social stack identified there is achieved through this bifurcated 'operations/commentary' social stack.
