What are the social sciences?
Social science
Social science is a category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. Social science as a whole has many branches. These social sciences include, but are not limited to: anthropology, archaeology, communication studies, economics, history, human geography, jurisprudence, linguistics, political science, psychology, public health, and sociology. The term is also sometimes used to refer specifically to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 19th century. For a more detailed list of sub-disciplines within the social sciences see: Outline of social science.
Human science
Human science studies the philosophical, biological, social, and cultural aspects of human life. Human Sciences aims to expand our understanding of the human world through a broad interdisciplinary approach. It encompasses a wide range of fields - including history, philosophy, genetics, sociology, psychology, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, neurosciences and anthropology. It is the study and interpretation of the experiences, activities, constructs, and artifacts associated with human beings. The study of the human sciences attempts to expand and enlighten the human being's knowledge of their existence, its interrelationship with other species and systems, and the development of artifacts to perpetuate the human expression and thought. It is the study of human phenomena. The study of the human experience is historical and current in nature. It requires the evaluation and interpretation of the historic human experience and the analysis of current human activity to gain an understanding of human phenomena and to project the outlines of human evolution. Human science is the objective, informed critique of human existence and how it relates to reality.
Human science
Human science (also, humanistic social science, moral science and human sciences) refers to the investigation of human life and activities via an interdisciplinary framework spanning the sciences and humanities. Underlying Human science is the relationship between various humanistic modes of inquiry within fields such as, history, sociology, anthropology and economics, and advances in such things as genetics, evolutionary biology and the social sciences for the purpose of understanding our lives in a rapidly changing world. Its use of an empirical methodology that encompasses psychological experience contrasts to the purely positivistic approach typical of the natural sciences which exclude all methods not based solely on sensory observations. Modern approaches in the human sciences integrate an understanding of human structure, function and adaptation with a broader exploration of what it means to be human. The term is also used to distinguish not only the content of a field of study from those of the natural sciences, but also its methodology.
Branches of science
The branches of science, also referred to as sciences, "scientific fields", or "scientific disciplines," are commonly divided into three major groups:Natural and social sciences are empirical sciences, meaning that the knowledge must be based on observable phenomena and must be capable of being verified by other researchers working under the same conditions.
Sociology
The first formal Department of Sociology in the world was established by Albion Small – at the invitation of William Rainey Harper – at the University of Chicago in 1892, and the American Journal of Sociology was founded shortly thereafter in 1895 by Small as well. However, the institutionalization of sociology as an academic discipline was chiefly led by Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who developed positivism as a foundation to practical social research. While Durkheim rejected much of the detail of Comte's philosophy, he retained and refined its method, maintaining that the social sciences are a logical continuation of the natural ones into the realm of human activity, and insisting that they may retain the same objectivity, rationalism, and approach to causality. Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his "Rules of the Sociological Method" (1895). For Durkheim, sociology could be described as the "science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning".
Social Science Information
Social Science Information/Information sur les sciences sociales is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers social science. The journal's editor-in-chief is Anne Rocha Perazzo (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences). It was established in 1962 and is currently published by SAGE Publications on behalf of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. The journal publishes articles in both English and French.
University of Zagreb
Social sciences
Computational social science
There are two terminologies that relate to each other: Social Science Computing (SSC) and Computational Social Science (CSS). In literature, CSS is referred to the field of social science that uses the computational approaches in studying the social phenomena.
On the other hand, SSC is the field in which computational methodologies are created to assist in explanations of social phenomena.
Double hermeneutic
Anthony Giddens (1982) argues that there is an important difference between the natural and social sciences. In the natural sciences, scientists try to understand and theorise about the way the natural world is structured. The understanding is one-way; that is, while we need to understand the actions of minerals or chemicals, chemicals and minerals don’t seek to develop an understanding of us. He refers to this as the ‘single hermeneutic’. (Hermeneutic means interpretation or understanding.) In contrast, the social sciences are engaged in the ‘double hermeneutic’. The various social sciences study people and society, although the way they do so is different. Some social sciences such as sociology don’t just study what people do, they also study how people understand their world, and how that understanding shapes their practice. Because people can think, make choices, and use new information to revise their understandings (and hence their practice), they can use the knowledge and insights of social science to change their practice.
Communication studies
Communication studies integrates aspects of both social sciences and the humanities. As a social science, the discipline overlaps with sociology, psychology, anthropology, biology, political science, economics, and public policy. From a humanities perspective, communication is concerned with rhetoric and persuasion (traditional graduate programs in communication studies trace their history to the rhetoricians of Ancient Greece). Humanities approaches to communication often overlap with history, philosophy, english, and cultural studies.
Behavioural sciences
The term "behavioural sciences" is often confused with the term "social sciences". Though these two broad areas are interrelated and study systematic processes of behaviour, they differ on their level of scientific analysis of various dimensions of behaviour.
Social network
Communication Studies are often considered a part of both the social sciences and the humanities, drawing heavily on fields such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, information science, biology, political science, and economics as well as rhetoric, literary studies, and semiotics. Many communication concepts describe the transfer of information from one source to another, and can thus be conceived of in terms of a network.
Bachelor's degree
The Bachelor of Social Science (B.S.Sc.) is a three- or four-year undergraduate British degree that enables students to specialize in the area of social science. Compared to the Bachelor of Arts, which allows students to study a vast range of disciplines, the Bachelor of Social Science enables students to develop more central and specialized knowledge of the social sciences. Many universities place the Bachelor of Social Science between the Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science undergraduate degrees.
Social science
Economics is a social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth. The word "economics" is from the Ancient Greek "oikos", "family, household, estate", and νόμος "nomos", "custom, law", and hence means "household management" or "management of the state". An economist is a person using economic concepts and data in the course of employment, or someone who has earned a degree in the subject. The classic brief definition of economics, set out by Lionel Robbins in 1932, is "the science which studies human behavior as a relation between scarce means having alternative uses". Without scarcity and alternative uses, there is no economic problem. Briefer yet is "the study of how people seek to satisfy needs and wants" and "the study of the financial aspects of human behavior".
Social science
Psychology is a very broad science that is rarely tackled as a whole, major block. Although some subfields encompass a natural science base and a social science application, others can be clearly distinguished as having little to do with the social sciences or having a lot to do with the social sciences. For example, biological psychology is considered a natural science with a social scientific application (as is clinical medicine), social and occupational psychology are, generally speaking, purely social sciences, whereas neuropsychology is a natural science that lacks application out of the scientific tradition entirely. In British universities, emphasis on what tenet of psychology a student has studied and/or concentrated is communicated through the degree conferred: B.Psy. indicates a balance between natural and social sciences, B.Sc. indicates a strong (or entire) scientific concentration, whereas a B.A. underlines a majority of social science credits. This is not always necessarily the case however, and in many UK institutions students studying the B.Psy, B.Sc, and B.A. follow the same curriculum as outlined by The British Psychological Society and have the same options of specialism open to them regardless of whether they choose a balance, a heavy science basis, or heavy social science basis to their degree. If they applied to read the B.A. for example, but specialized in heavily science-based modules, then they will still generally be awarded the B.A.
Science &amp; Society
Science & Society: A Journal of Marxist Thought and Analysis is a peer-reviewed academic journal of Marxist scholarship. It covers economics, philosophy of science, historiography, women's studies, literature, the arts, and other social science disciplines from a Marxist point of view. As well as covering social and political theory, it includes first-order historical research.
Hồ Chí Minh Prize
Social sciences
Branches of science
"Mathematics", first of all known as The Science of numbers which is classified in Arithmetic and Algebra, is classified as a formal science, has both similarities and differences with the empirical sciences (the natural and social sciences). It is similar to empirical sciences in that it involves an objective, careful and systematic study of an area of knowledge; it is different because of its method of verifying its knowledge, using "a priori" rather than empirical methods.
Humanities
Anthropology is the holistic "science of humans", a science of the totality of human existence. The discipline deals with the integration of different aspects of the social sciences, humanities and human biology. In the twentieth century, academic disciplines have often been institutionally divided into three broad domains. The natural "sciences" seek to derive general laws through reproducible and verifiable experiments. The "humanities" generally study local traditions, through their history, literature, music, and arts, with an emphasis on understanding particular individuals, events, or eras. The "social sciences" have generally attempted to develop scientific methods to understand social phenomena in a generalizable way, though usually with methods distinct from those of the natural sciences.
Sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of society, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and culture of everyday life. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, acceptance, and change or social evolution. While some sociologists conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes. Subject matter ranges from the micro-sociology level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems and the social structure.
The Rules of Sociological Method
The Rules of Sociological Method () is a book by Émile Durkheim, first published in 1895. It is recognized as being the direct result of Durkheim's own project of establishing sociology as a positivist social science. Durkheim is seen as one of the fathers of sociology, and this work, his manifesto of sociology. Durkheim distinguishes sociology from other sciences and justifies his rationale. Sociology is the science of social facts. Durkheim suggests two central theses, without which sociology would not be a science:This book was one of the defining books for the new science of sociology. Durkheim's argument that social sciences should be approached with the same rigorous scientific method as used in natural sciences was seen as revolutionary for the time.
Shaler Area High School
Social Sciences
Public sociology
Debates over public sociology have rekindled questions concerning the extra-academic "purpose" of sociology. Public sociology raises questions about what sociology is and what its goals ought to (or even could) be. Such debates (over science and political advocacy, scholarship and public commitment) have a long history in American sociology and in American social science more generally. Historian Mark C. Smith, for instance, has investigated earlier debates over the purpose of social science in his book "Social Science in the Crucible: The American Debate over Objectivity and Purpose,1918-1941" (1994), while Stephen P. Turner and Jonathan H. Turner argue in their book, "The Impossible Science: An Institutional Analysis of American Sociology" (1990), that sociology's search for purpose, through dependence on external publics, has limited the discipline's potential.
Logology (science of science)
The term "science" (from the Latin ""scientia"", "knowledge") means somewhat different things in different languages. In the English language, "science", when unqualified, generally refers to the "natural", "exact", or "hard sciences". The corresponding terms in other languages, for example , German, and , refer to a broader domain that includes not only the exact sciences (logic and mathematics) and the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, Earth sciences, geography, astronomy, etc.) but also the engineering sciences, social sciences (history, geography, psychology, physical anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, international relations, pedagogy, etc.), and humanities (philosophy, history, cultural anthropology, linguistics, etc.).
Master of Social Science
A Master of Social Science (MSSc or M.Soc.Sci) is a Master's degree which has a number of different meanings dependent upon the education system in question.
Campaign for Social Science
The Campaign for Social Science was launched in 2011 to advocate social science to the UK Government and to the public, at a time of significant change in the higher education system. It campaigns for the restoration of the post of Government Chief Social Science Advisor, promotes social science in the media and on the web, and organises roadshows and other events to emphasise the value of social science.
National Council for the Social Studies
NCSS defines social studies as "the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence." Within the school program, social studies provides coordinated, systematic study drawing upon such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology, as well as appropriate content from the humanities, mathematics, and natural sciences. In essence, social studies promotes knowledge of and involvement in civic affairs. And because civic issues—such as health care, crime, and foreign policy—are multidisciplinary in nature, understanding these issues and developing resolutions to them requires multidisciplinary education. These characteristics are the key defining aspects of social studies.
Social science
Sociology is the systematic study of society, individuals' relationship to their societies, the consequences of difference, and other aspects of human social action. The meaning of the word comes from the suffix "-logy", which means "study of", derived from Ancient Greek, and the stem "soci-", which is from the Latin word "socius", meaning "companion", or society in general.
Sociology
Although the subject matter and methodologies in social science differ from those in natural science or computer science, several of the approaches used in contemporary social simulation originated from fields such as physics and artificial intelligence. By the same token, some of the approaches that originated in computational sociology have been imported into the natural sciences, such as measures of network centrality from the fields of social network analysis and network science. In relevant literature, computational sociology is often related to the study of social complexity. Social complexity concepts such as complex systems, non-linear interconnection among macro and micro process, and emergence, have entered the vocabulary of computational sociology. A practical and well-known example is the construction of a computational model in the form of an "artificial society", by which researchers can analyse the structure of a social system.
National Curriculum Framework (NCF 2005)
Social Sciences - Social science a subject is included in schools to assist students to explore their interests and aptitudes in order to choose appropriate university courses and/or careers. To encourage them to explore higher levels of knowledge in different disciplines. To promote problem-solving abilities and creative thinking in the citizens of tomorrow, to introduce students to different ways of collecting and processing data and information in specific disciplines, and help them arrive at conclusions, and to generate new insights and knowledge in the process.
Philosophy of social science
Early German hermeneuticians such as Wilhelm Dilthey pioneered the distinction between natural and social science ('Geisteswissenschaft'). This tradition greatly informed Max Weber and Georg Simmel's antipositivism, and continued with critical theory. Since the 1960s, a general weakening of deductivist accounts of science has grown side-by-side with critiques of "scientism", or 'science "as ideology"'. Jürgen Habermas argues, in his "On the Logic of the Social Sciences" (1967), that "the positivist thesis of unified science, which assimilates all the sciences to a natural-scientific model, fails because of the intimate relationship between the social sciences and history, and the fact that they are based on a situation-specific understanding of meaning that can be explicated only hermeneutically … access to a symbolically prestructured reality cannot be gained by observation alone." "Verstehende" social theory has been the concern of phenomenological works, such as Alfred Schütz "Phenomenology of the Social World" (1932) and Hans-Georg Gadamer's "Truth and Method" (1960). Phenomenology would later prove influential in the subject-centred theory of the post-structuralists.
Michael Scarce
He also received a Master's Degree from OSU in Comparative Studies of Science and Technology, otherwise known as science studies. The field of science studies is an interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise in a broad social, historical, and philosophical context. It is concerned with the history of scientific disciplines, the interrelationships between science and society, and the alleged covert purposes that underlie scientific claims. While it is critical of science, it holds out the possibility of broader public participation in science policy issues.
Bitney College Preparatory High School
Social Sciences
Social science
Political science is an academic and research discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. Fields and subfields of political science include political economy, political theory and philosophy, civics and comparative politics, theory of direct democracy, apolitical governance, participatory direct democracy, national systems, cross-national political analysis, political development, international relations, foreign policy, international law, politics, public administration, administrative behaviour, public law, judicial behaviour, and public policy. Political science also studies power in international relations and the theory of great powers and superpowers.
Computational social science
Computational social science refers to the academic sub-disciplines concerned with computational approaches to the social sciences. This means that computers are used to model, simulate, and analyze social phenomena. Fields include computational economics, computational sociology, cliodynamics, culturomics, and the automated analysis of contents, in social and traditional media. It focuses on investigating social and behavioral relationships and interactions through social simulation, modeling, network analysis, and media analysis.
Master of Social Science
In Finland and Sweden, where the university degree nomenclatura is simply based on the faculties from which they are awarded, "Master of Social Science" (M.Soc.Sci) is the name given to any master's degree awarded by the Faculty of Social Science. This is just as the Faculty of Theology awards "Masters of Theology" (M.Th.), the Faculty of Arts awards "Masters of Fine Arts" (M.F.A.), and so forth. Consequently, Master of Social Science degrees are quite common amongst Finnish & Swedish graduates. (See Magister)
Gender
The social sciences have a branch devoted to gender studies. Other sciences, such as sexology and neuroscience, are also interested in the subject. The social sciences sometimes approach gender as a social construct, and gender studies particularly do, while research in the natural sciences investigates whether biological differences in males and females influence the development of gender in humans; both inform debate about how far biological differences influence the formation of gender identity. In some English literature, there is also a trichotomy between biological sex, psychological gender, and social gender role. This framework first appeared in a feminist paper on transsexualism in 1978.
Historiography of the United States
The Social Science History Association, formed in 1976, brings together scholars from numerous disciplines interested in social history and publishes "Social Science History" quarterly. The field is also the specialty of the "Journal of Social History", edited since 1967 by Peter Stearns It covers such topics as gender relations; race in American history; the history of personal relationships; consumerism; sexuality; the social history of politics; crime and punishment, and history of the senses. Most of the major historical journals have coverage as well.
Thanatology
Several social sciences focus on the broad picture, and they frequently encounter the issue of death. Sociology is the study of social rules. Sub-disciplines within sociology, such as the sociology of disaster, focus more narrowly on the issue of how societies handle death. Likewise, cultural anthropology and archeology are concerned with how current and past cultures have dealt with death, respectively. Society and culture are similar concepts, but their scopes are different. A society is an interdependent community, while culture is an "attribute" of a community: the complex web of shifting patterns that link individuals together. In any case, both cultures and societies must deal with death; the various cultural studies (many of which overlap with each other) examine this response using a variety of approaches.
Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
Each year, ASSA runs a series of events, which shine a light on the role the social sciences have in the public sphere.
Social science
Political science is methodologically diverse, although recent years have witnessed an upsurge in the use of the scientific method, that is, the proliferation of formal-deductive model building and quantitative hypothesis testing. Approaches to the discipline include rational choice, classical political philosophy, interpretivism, structuralism, and behaviouralism, realism, pluralism, and institutionalism. Political science, as one of the social sciences, uses methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquiries sought: primary sources such as historical documents, interviews, and official records, as well as secondary sources such as scholarly articles are used in building and testing theories. Empirical methods include survey research, statistical analysis or econometrics, case studies, experiments, and model building. Herbert Baxter Adams is credited with coining the phrase "political science" while teaching history at Johns Hopkins University.
Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi
The Institute of Social Sciences studies social, political and economic issues of contemporary relevance. It provides inputs to the policy makers and civil society organisations.
School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences
Originally a department of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, an institution created in 1868 with the purpose of training academic researchers, the EHESS became an independent institution in 1975. Today its research covers the fields of Economics and Finance (through the Paris School of Economics), Cognitive Sciences, Humanities, Political Sciences, Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Development studies, Sociology, Anthropology, History, Musicology, and Philosophy of social science.
Social science
The term "social science" may refer either to the specific "sciences of society" established by thinkers such as Comte, Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, or more generally to all disciplines outside of "noble science" and arts. By the late 19th century, the academic social sciences were constituted of five fields: jurisprudence and amendment of the law, education, health, economy and trade, and art.
Social science
Communication studies integrates aspects of both social sciences and the humanities. As a social science, the discipline often overlaps with sociology, psychology, anthropology, biology, political science, economics, and public policy, among others. From a humanities perspective, communication is concerned with rhetoric and persuasion (traditional graduate programs in communication studies trace their history to the rhetoricians of Ancient Greece). The field applies to outside disciplines as well, including engineering, architecture, mathematics, and information science.
Peter Manicas
Following description of his book: "A History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences", provides some of the core elements of his thought which are radically different from mainstream views. This book is in three main parts: (I)It deals first with the history of certain key ideas from the early modern period (assessing thinkers from Hobbes and Marx to Hegel, Weber and Kuhn, (II) before exploring the institutional and social features which have shaped the emergence of modern social science,(III) concluding by suggesting an alternative realist philosophy for the future.
This ambitious critical history of the variety of the disciplines we group together as social sciences argues that the defining characteristic of social science, both historically and in the present, is ideology. Based originally on a flawed idea of science, the ‘social sciences’ have incorporated and refined a set of assumptions about the nature of state and society, assumptions which have been institutionalized with the growth of modern universities.
A deep moral vision informs this study. A (if not the) principle moral of Professor Manicas’s historical sketch is that ‘the modern social sciences have been, unwittingly or not, defenders of the status quo; (p. 276)… Despite this history, ‘social science is potentially liberating’ (ibid.). But, the human sciences can be liberating disciplines, humanizing practices, only if they empower people to see that ‘while social reality is real enough, it is not like unchanging nature, but is just that which is sustained by human activities, activities regarding which human have the only say’ (ibid.). This means, in effect, empowering human beings to see themselves as “causal agents” and as such, beings ‘capable of re-fashioning society in the direction of greater humanity, freedom, and justice’ (p. 277). Vincent Colapietro, Pennsylvania State University, Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, Newsletter
Mathematical Social Sciences
Mathematical Social Sciences is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal in the field of social science, in particular economics. The journal covers research on mathematical modelling in fields such as economics, psychology, political science, and other social sciences, including individual decision making and preferences, decisions under risk, collective choice, voting, theories of measurement, and game theory.
Social history
The Social Science History Association was formed in 1976 to bring together scholars from numerous disciplines interested in social history. It is still active and publishes "Social Science History" quarterly. The field is also the specialty of the "Journal of Social History", edited since 1967 by Peter Stearns It covers such topics as gender relations; race in American history; the history of personal relationships; consumerism; sexuality; the social history of politics; crime and punishment, and history of the senses. Most of the major historical journals have coverage as well.
Bachelor of Social Science
Disciplines and areas of study of the Bachelor of Social Science include Anthropology, Criminology, Economics, Environmental Planning, Geography, Community Development, History, Human Ecology, Human Services, International Development, Industrial Relations, Political Science, Psychology, Demography, Public Health, Public Policy, Sustainability, Statistics, and Sociology.
Social science
In the contemporary period, Karl Popper and Talcott Parsons influenced the furtherance of the social sciences. Researchers continue to search for a unified consensus on what methodology might have the power and refinement to connect a proposed "grand theory" with the various midrange theories that, with considerable success, continue to provide usable frameworks for massive, growing data banks; for more, see consilience. The social sciences will for the foreseeable future be composed of different zones in the research of, and sometime distinct in approach toward, the field.
Pi Gamma Mu
Pi Gamma Mu or ΠΓΜ (from Πολιτικές Γνώσεως Μάθεται) is the oldest and preeminent honor society in the social sciences. It is also the only interdisciplinary social science honor society. It serves the various social science disciplines which seek to understand and explain human behavior and social relationships as well as their concomitant problems and issues. Pi Gamma Mu's constitution defines the social sciences to include the disciplines of history, political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, international relations, criminal justice, social work, social philosophy, history of education, and human geography. Membership is also extended to interdisciplinary social science fields that build on the core social science disciplines, such as business administration, education, cultural and area studies, public administration, and organizational behavior.
Scientific Revolution
The transformation of scientific subject also concerns the social sciences. These inherit from a natural philosophy a dispute that authors like Francesco Bacone and Descartes take charge of following. This particular aspect is questioned. Thus arise disciplines that reflect the natural world with social laws. They are sociology, social policy, the specialized study of morality. Authors such as Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer seek a connection with the affirmation of the inductive method, from the 16th century to the 19th century. Sociological science is born in this moment of great evolution for the sciences. Even the history of science seems to include subjects such as new psychology, morality and sociology ( Cfr. Guglielmo Rinzivillo, "Natura, cultura e induzione nell'età delle scienze. Fatti e idee del movimento scientifico in Francia e Inghilterra", Rome, New Culture, 2015, Series GNOSEIS, .
Hans-Ulrich Wehler
Wehler sees history as a social science and contends that social developments are frequently more important than politics. In his view, history is a "critical social science" that must examine both the "temporal structures" of a society and encourage a "freer critical awareness of society". Wehler has advocated an approach he calls "Historische Sozialwissenschaft" (Historical Social Science), which favors integrating elements of history, sociology, economics and anthropology to study in a holistic fashion long-term social changes in a society In Wehler's view, Germany between 1871–1945 was dominated by a social structure which retarded modernization in some areas while allowing it in others. For Wehler, Germany's defeat in 1945 finally smashed the "pre-modern" social structure and let Germany become a normal "Western" country.
Social work
Social work is an academic discipline and profession that concerns itself with individuals, families, groups and communities in an effort to enhance social functioning and overall well-being. Social functioning refers to the way in which people perform their social roles, and the structural institutions that are provided to sustain them. Social work applies social sciences, such as sociology, psychology, political science, public health, community development, law, and economics, to engage with client systems, conduct assessments, and develop interventions to solve social and personal problems; and create social change. Social work practice is often divided into micro-work, which involves working directly with individuals or small groups; and macro-work, which involves working with communities, and within social policy, to create change on a larger scale.
Outline of social science
Social science – branch of science concerned with society and human behaviors.
History of the social sciences
Though Comte is generally regarded as the "Father of Sociology", the discipline was formally established by another French thinker, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who developed positivism in greater detail. Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his "Rules of the Sociological Method". In 1896, he established the journal "L'Année Sociologique". Durkheim's seminal monograph, "Suicide" (1897), a case study of suicide rates among Catholic and Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy. It also marked a major contribution to the concept of structural functionalism.
Humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the time. Today, the humanities are more frequently contrasted with natural, and sometimes social, sciences as well as professional training.
Social science
Around the start of the 20th century, Enlightenment philosophy was challenged in various quarters. After the use of classical theories since the end of the scientific revolution, various fields substituted mathematics studies for experimental studies and examining equations to build a theoretical structure. The development of social science subfields became very quantitative in methodology. The interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary nature of scientific inquiry into human behaviour, social and environmental factors affecting it, made many of the natural sciences interested in some aspects of social science methodology. Examples of boundary blurring include emerging disciplines like social research of medicine, sociobiology, neuropsychology, bioeconomics and the history and sociology of science. Increasingly, quantitative research and qualitative methods are being integrated in the study of human action and its implications and consequences. In the first half of the 20th century, statistics became a free-standing discipline of applied mathematics. Statistical methods were used confidently.
Socioeconomics
Socioeconomics (also known as social economics) is the social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. In general it analyzes how societies progress, stagnate, or regress because of their local or regional economy, or the global economy. Societies are divided into 3 groups: social, cultural and economic.
Science
Formal science is involved in the study of formal systems. It includes mathematics, systems theory, robotics, and theoretical computer science. The formal sciences share similarities with the other two branches by relying on objective, careful, and systematic study of an area of knowledge. They are, however, different from the empirical sciences as they rely exclusively on deductive reasoning, without the need for empirical evidence, to verify their abstract concepts. The formal sciences are therefore "a priori" disciplines and because of this, there is disagreement on whether they actually constitute a science. Nevertheless, the formal sciences play an important role in the empirical sciences. Calculus, for example, was initially invented to understand motion in physics. Natural and social sciences that rely heavily on mathematical applications include mathematical physics, mathematical chemistry, mathematical biology, mathematical finance, and mathematical economics.
Political Science (disambiguation)
Political Science is a social science dealing with politics and systems of government.
Social science
In the United States, a university may offer a student who studies a social sciences field a Bachelor of Arts degree, particularly if the field is within one of the traditional liberal arts such as history, or a BSc: Bachelor of Science degree such as those given by the London School of Economics, as the social sciences constitute one of the two main branches of science (the other being the natural sciences). In addition, some institutions have degrees for a particular social science, such as the Bachelor of Economics degree, though such specialized degrees are relatively rare in the United States.
Environmental social science
Environmental social science is the broad, transdisciplinary study of interrelations between humans and the natural environment. Environmental social scientists work within and between the fields of anthropology, communication studies, economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, and sociology; and also in the interdisciplinary fields of environmental studies, human ecology and political ecology, social epidemiology, among others.
History of sociology
Various quantitative social research techniques have become common tools for governments, businesses, and organizations, and have also found use in the other social sciences. Divorced from theoretical explanations of social dynamics, this has given social research a degree of autonomy from the discipline of sociology. Similarly, ""social science"" has come to be appropriated as an umbrella term to refer to various disciplines which study humans, interaction, society or culture.
Social Science Quarterly
Social Science Quarterly is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Southwestern Social Science Association. The journal covers political science, sociology, economics, history, social work, geography, international studies, and women's studies. The editors-in-chief are Keith Gaddie (University of Oklahoma), Kirby Goidel (Texas A&M University), and Kim Gaddie (University of Oklahoma)
Socialization
In the social sciences, institutions are the structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of individuals within a given human collectivity. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior.
Social studies
In the United States education system, social studies is the integrated study of multiple fields of social science and the humanities, including history, geography, and political science. The term was first coined by American educators around the turn of the twentieth century as a catch-all for these subjects, as well as others which did not fit into the traditional models of lower education in the United States, such as philosophy and psychology.
What Is History?
About the rise of social history as a subject at the expense of political history, Carr wrote:"Social history is the bedrock. To study the bedrock alone is not enough; and becomes tedious; perhaps this is what happened to Annales. But you can't dispense with it". Through Carr himself had insisted that history was a social science, he regretted the decline of history as a discipline relative to the other social sciences, which he saw as a part of a conservative trend. Carr wrote: "History is preoccupied with fundamental processes of change. If you are allergic to these processes, you abandon history and take cover in the social sciences. Today anthropology, sociology, etc, flourish. History is sick. But then our society too is sick".
Journal of the International AIDS Society
• Social sciences and humanities, including political sciences and media
Social philosophy
Social philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy all share intimate connections with other disciplines in the social sciences. In turn, the social sciences themselves are of focal interest to the philosophy of social science.
Outline of social science
Social science can be described as all of the following:Ashishmedia
Philosophy of social science
The philosophy of social science is the study of the logic, methods, and foundations of social sciences such as psychology, economics, and political science. Philosophers of social science are concerned with the differences and similarities between the social and the natural sciences, causal relationships between social phenomena, the possible existence of social laws, and the ontological significance of structure and agency.Comte first described the epistemological perspective of positivism in "The Course in Positive Philosophy", a series of texts published between 1830 and 1842. These texts were followed by the 1848 work, "A General View of Positivism" (published in English in 1865). The first three volumes of the "Course" dealt chiefly with the physical sciences already in existence (mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology), whereas the latter two emphasised the inevitable coming of social science. Observing the circular dependence of theory and observation in science, and classifying the sciences in this way, Comte may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. For him, the physical sciences had necessarily to arrive first, before humanity could adequately channel its efforts into the most challenging and complex "Queen science" of human society itself. His "View of Positivism" would therefore set-out to define, in more detail, the empirical goals of sociological method.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences (journal)
Philosophy of the Social Sciences is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers philosophy of social science. Its editor-in-chief is Ian C. Jarvie (York University). The journal was established in 1971 and is currently published by Sage Publications.
Social science
Most universities offer degrees in social science fields. The Bachelor of Social Science is a degree targeted at the social sciences in particular. It is often more flexible and in-depth than other degrees that include social science subjects.
Doctor of Social Science
The Doctor of Social Science degree is a higher qualification offered by select universities, which serves as a doctoral level qualification specifically relating to academic work in the field of social sciences.
Cecil Hills High School
Social Sciences
Sociology
Sociology and applied sociology are connected to the professional and academic discipline of social work. Both disciplines study social interactions, community and the effect of various systems (i.e. family, school, community, laws, political sphere) on the individual. However, social work is generally more focused on practical strategies to alleviate social dysfunctions; sociology in general provides a thorough examination of the root causes of these problems. For example, a sociologist might study "why" a community is plagued with poverty. The applied sociologist would be more focused on practical strategies on "what" needs to be done to alleviate this burden. The social worker would be focused on "action"; implementing theses strategies "directly" or "indirectly" by means of mental health therapy, counselling, advocacy, community organization or community mobilization.
Social science
Sociology evolved as an academic response to the challenges of modernity, such as industrialization, urbanization, secularization, and a perceived process of enveloping rationalization. The field generally concerns the social rules and processes that bind and separate people not only as individuals, but as members of associations, groups, communities and institutions, and includes the examination of the organization and development of human social life. The sociological field of interest ranges from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes. In the terms of sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, social scientists seek an understanding of the "Social Construction of Reality". Most sociologists work in one or more subfields. One useful way to describe the discipline is as a cluster of sub-fields that examine different dimensions of society. For example, social stratification studies inequality and class structure; demography studies changes in a population size or type; criminology examines criminal behaviour and deviance; and political sociology studies the interaction between society and state.
Making Social Science Matter
Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again is a 2001 book by Bent Flyvbjerg, who is critical of social sciences. First, he argues that social sciences have failed as science. Second, he develops an argument that in order to matter again, social sciences must model themselves after phronesis (as opposed to episteme, which is at the core of natural science). Finally, he develops methodological guidelines and shows practical examples of how a phronetic social science may be employed for research purposes.
Social science
Additional applied or interdisciplinary fields related to the social sciences include:
Peter L. Berger
Berger saw the field of sociology as not only just a way to help people and the community, but sociological insights are also important to all people interested in instilling action in society. Sociologists are a part of a multitude of fields, not just social work. Berger stated that sociology is not a practice, but an attempt to understand the social world. These understandings could be used by people in any field for whatever purpose and with whatever moral implications. He believed that sociologists, even if their values varied greatly, should at the very least have scientific integrity. Sociologists are only humans and will still have to deal with things such as convictions, emotions, and prejudices, but being trained in sociology should learn to understand and control these things and try to eliminate them from their work. A sociologist's job is to accurately report on a certain social terrain. Sociology is a science, and its findings are found through observation of certain rules of evidence that allow people to repeat and continue to develop the findings.
Social Sciences (journal)
Social Sciences, or "Soc. Sci." may refer to
Social control
Social control is a concept within the disciplines of the social sciences.
Formal science
Formal sciences are formal language disciplines concerned with formal systems, such as logic, mathematics, statistics, theoretical computer science, robotics, information theory, game theory, systems theory, decision theory, and theoretical linguistics. Whereas the natural sciences and social sciences seek to characterize physical systems and social systems, respectively, using empirical methods, the formal sciences are language tools concerned with characterizing abstract structures described by sign systems. The formal sciences aid the natural and social sciences by providing information about the structures the latter use to describe the world, and what inferences may be made about them.
CUNY School of Medicine
Sociomedical Sciences
Pseudoscience
Different philosophers of science may disagree on the exact limits – for example, is mathematics a formal science that is closer to the empirical ones, or is pure mathematics closer to the philosophical study of logic and therefore not a science? – but all agree that all of the ideas that are not scientific are non-scientific. The large category of non-science includes all matters outside the natural and social sciences, such as the study of history, metaphysics, religion, art, and the humanities.
History of the social sciences
The history of the social sciences has origin in the common stock of Western philosophy and shares various precursors, but began most intentionally in the early 19th century with the positivist philosophy of science. Since the mid-20th century, the term "social science" has come to refer more generally, not just to sociology, but to all those disciplines which analyse society and culture; from anthropology to linguistics to media studies.
Western Oregon University
The Social Science Division is a cluster of disciplines concerned with the characteristics and interactions of humans in their social and physical settings. These include anthropology, criminal justice, geography, history, political science, and sociology. The Social Science Division also includes programs in public policy and administration and international studies. The BA and BS degrees are offered. Master's degrees are offered in Criminal Justice.
Philosophy of social science
The modern academic discipline of sociology began with the work of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). While Durkheim rejected much of the detail of Comte's philosophy, he retained and refined its method, maintaining that the social sciences are a logical continuation of the natural ones into the realm of human activity, and insisting that they may retain the same objectivity, rationalism, and approach to causality. Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895. In the same year he argued, in "The Rules of Sociological Method" (1895): "[o]ur main goal is to extend scientific rationalism to human conduct... What has been called our positivism is but a consequence of this rationalism." Durkheim's seminal monograph "Suicide" (1897), a case study of suicide rates amongst Catholic and Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy.
Mannheim School of Social Sciences
The Mannheim School of Social Sciences (MSSS) is the among the oldest of the five schools comprising the University of Mannheim, located in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The School of Social Sciences, established in 1963, comprises the fields of political science, sociology and psychology with an academic staff of 36 professors and 150 additional scientists. The social sciences at the University of Mannheim have an excellent international reputation, reflected by rankings, awards and third-party funds.
Hồ Chí Minh Prize
Social sciences
Sociology of scientific knowledge
The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociology of scientific ignorance (SSI) is complementary to the sociology of scientific knowledge. For comparison, the sociology of knowledge studies the impact of human knowledge and the prevailing ideas on societies and relations between knowledge and the social context within which it arises.
Hard and soft science
Critics of the concept argue that soft sciences are implicitly considered to be less "legitimate" scientific fields, or simply not scientific at all. An editorial in "Nature" stated that social science findings are more likely to intersect with everyday experience and may be dismissed as "obvious or insignificant" as a result. Being labelled a soft science can affect the perceived value of a discipline to society and the amount of funding available to it. In the 1980s, mathematician Serge Lang successfully blocked influential political scientist Samuel P. Huntington's admission to the US National Academy of Sciences, describing Huntington's use of mathematics to quantify the relationship between factors such as "social frustration" (Lang asked Huntington if he possessed a "social-frustration meter") as "pseudoscience". During the late 2000s recessions, social science was disproportionately targeted for funding cuts compared to mathematics and natural science. Proposals were made for the United States' National Science Foundation to cease funding disciplines such as political science altogether. Both of these incidents prompted critical discussion of the distinction between hard and soft sciences.
Social technology
In 1928, Luther Lee Bernard defines "applied" science as the "collection of norms or standards, built up on the basis of observation and experiment and measurement, which is capable of serving as a means to the control of our relationships to our world or universe". He then tries to separate this from social technology saying that social technology also "includes administration as well as the determination of the norms which are to be applied in the administration". In 1935 he wrote an article called "The Place of Social Sciences in Modern Education". In this article, he writes about the nature of an effective education in the social sciences to reach effective education by the willing masses. It would be of three types: Firstly, "a description of present conditions and trends in society". Secondly, "the teaching of desirable social ends and ideals necessary to correct such social maladjustments as we now have". Thirdly, "a system of social technology which, if applied, might be expected to remedy existing maladjustments and realize valid social ends". The aspects of social technology which lags behind are the technologies involved in the "less material forms of human welfare". These are the applied sciences of "the control of crime, abolition of poverty, the raising of every normal person to economic, political, and personal competency, the art of good government, or city, rural, and national planning". On the other hand, "the best developed social technologies, such as advertising, finance, and 'practical' politics, are used in the main for antisocial rather than for proper humanitarian ends".
Social science
The beginnings of the social sciences in the 18th century are reflected in the grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with articles from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other pioneers. The growth of the social sciences is also reflected in other specialized encyclopedias. The modern period saw ""social science"" first used as a distinct conceptual field. Social science was influenced by positivism, focusing on knowledge based on actual positive sense experience and avoiding the negative; metaphysical speculation was avoided. Auguste Comte used the term ""science sociale"" to describe the field, taken from the ideas of Charles Fourier; Comte also referred to the field as "social physics".
Collective network
Social sciences aim also at the development of new models to manage groups and their internal and external relations according to the limits and the abilities of the human nature, so that to increase the efficiency of the groups. This is the reason behind the Yoosphera, the experimental collective network which is being continuously monitored and developed through a specific piece of software, also named Yoosphera, which reinforces the sense of community in territorial groups as mentioned above. It also nurtures the creation of small groups organised in concentric rings, being small groups easily to be managed according to the theories of Professor Robin Dunbar, in particular Dunbar’s number.
Social science
The history of the social sciences begins in the Age of Enlightenment after 1650, which saw a revolution within natural philosophy, changing the basic framework by which individuals understood what was "scientific". Social sciences came forth from the moral philosophy of the time and were influenced by the Age of Revolutions, such as the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. The "social sciences" developed from the sciences (experimental and applied), or the systematic knowledge-bases or prescriptive practices, relating to the social improvement of a group of interacting entities.
Behavioural sciences
Behavioural sciences abstract empirical data to investigate the decision processes and communication strategies within and between organisms in a social system. This involves fields like psychology, social neuroscience ethology, and cognitive science. In contrast, social sciences provide a perceptive framework to study the processes of a social system through impacts of social organization on structural adjustment of the individual and of groups. They typically include fields like sociology, economics, public health, anthropology, demography and political science.
Pseudoscience
Philosophers classify types of knowledge. In English, the word "science" is used to indicate specifically the natural sciences and related fields, which are called the social sciences.
Outline of health sciences
Health sciences – are those sciences which focus on health, or health care, as core parts of their subject matter. Because these two subject matter relate to multiple academic disciplines, both STEM disciplines as well as emerging patient safety disciplines (such as social care research) are relevant to current health scientific knowledge.
Science and technology in China
A 2009 study of Chinese social science studies in the Social Sciences Citation Index found a slow increase until 1999. The 1999-2007 period saw a very rapid increase. However, in 2007 China still only contributed 1.39% of the studies and mainland China only surpassed Hong Kong in 2006. Economics & business had larger share than social, political & communication science and psychology. The low share of social sciences compared to natural sciences may reflect that this is a common pattern in Asian nations, that Chinese social scientists publish in national journals not included in the Index and have less career incitements regarding publishing in international journals, and that state ideology and control is more important for social sciences than natural sciences. In China natural sciences are administered by the Ministry of Science and Technology while social sciences are administered by the National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Sciences which may hinder inter-disciplinary collaboration.