Is social reality "fluffy" reality?

I just finished reading Reos Partner's report on the Bhavishya Alliance, an Indian multi-stakeholder partnership set up to address child malnutrition. It uses the Change Lab approach based on the U-process.

The report is a very honest attempt to describe the successes, learning points and ideas for improvement that emerged out of that process. It's inspiring to see the depth of insights into the layers, complexities and dynamics of social reality.

Social sciences are often described as the "soft" stuff, the "touchy-feely" things as well as being "fluffy". I concede that this is probably how it appears to certain observes, but I would also like to point out that it could say more about the perceiver than the perceived.

Ed Schein, professor at MIT writes that "We don't talk about what we can see, we see what we can talk about". Denoting a phenomenon as "fluffy" is akin to saying: "My view is blurred." However, it doesn't necessarily say anything about the perceived object per se.

My belief is that there is a wealth of knowledge (academic and common) on physical processes, stemming from natural science. However, there is a vast lack of knowledge about social reality, its processes as well as the inner workings of the human psyche. If we were to increase this knowledge, then these phenomenon, which are all around us, might not seem as "fluffy" as in the past.