The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

The line draws a sharp—arguably polemical—distinction between disciplines that test claims through explicit logical inference (“reasoning”) and those that, in the speaker’s view, can be pursued by accumulating and citing learning (“scholarship”) without the same pressure to demonstrate causal or predictive rigor. Read as Heinlein-esque provocation, it champions the scientific habit of mind: making arguments that must cohere, be checkable, and survive criticism. At the same time, it caricatures the humanities and social sciences as “fuzzy,” implying vagueness or insulation from falsification. The quote is thus less a neutral taxonomy of knowledge than a rhetorical defense of analytical thinking and a jab at fields perceived as relying on authority, tradition, or interpretation rather than demonstrable reasoning.