Concept

Social science

Overview

Social science (or the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. It now encompasses a wide array of additional academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, management, communication studies, psychology, sociology, culturology, and political science.

The majority of positivist social scientists use methods resembling those used in the natural sciences as tools for understanding societies, and so define science in its stricter modern sense. Speculative social scientists, otherwise known as interpretivist scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its broader sense. In modern academic practice, researchers are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies (combining both quantitative and qualitative research). To gain a deeper understanding of complex human behavior in digital environments, social science disciplines have increasingly integrated interdisciplinary approaches, big data, and computational tools. The term social research has also acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners from various disciplines share similar goals and methods.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Social science is discussed.

This general Science of Society, as distinguished from the separate departments of the science (each of which asserts its conclusions only conditionally, subject to the paramount control of the laws of the general science) now remains to be characterized. And as will be shown presently, nothing of a really scientific character is here possible, except by the inverse deductive method.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
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This branch of science, whether we prefer to call it social economy, speculative politics, or the natural history of society, presupposes the whole science of the nature of the individual mind; since all the laws of which the latter science takes cognizance are brought into play in a state of society, and the truths of the social science are but statements of the manner in which those simple laws take effect in…
John Stuart Mill, Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy
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But supposition aside, it is clear that the habitual recognition of these claims in their laws implied some prevision of social phenomena. Even thus early there was a certain amount of social science. Nay, it may even be shown that there was a vague recognition of that fundamental principle on which all the true social science is based--the equal rights of all to the free exercise of their faculties. That same idea…
Herbert Spencer, Essays on education and kindred subjects
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Thus the foundation of social science bears out the statement made at the beginning of this work, that the intellect would, under Positivism, accept its proper position of subordination to the heart. The recognition of this, which is the subjective principle of Positivism, renders the construction of a complete system of human life possible.
Auguste Comte, A General View of Positivism Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and Life
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This is to be firmly held in mind because it has an immediate and important bearing on the matter of the subdivisions of the science. For instance, nothing seems more natural than to start with rent, with landed property, since it is bound up with land, the source of all production and all existence, and with the first form of production in all more…
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
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Social science

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Social science

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Place in the tradition