Science, as one of the forms of cognition and explanation of the world, is constantly evolving: the number of its branches and directions is growing steadily. This development is especially vividly demonstrated by the development of social sciences, which open up more and more new facets of the life of modern society. What are they? What is the subject of their study? Read more about this in the article.
Social science
This concept appeared relatively recently. Scientists attribute its emergence to the development of science as a whole, which began in the 16-17th century. It was then that science embarked on its own path of development, combining and incorporating the entire system of semi-scientific knowledge that had formed at that time.
It should be noted that social science is an integral system of scientific knowledge, which in its basis contains a number of disciplines. The task of the latter is a comprehensive study of society and its constituent elements.
The rapid development and complication of this category in the last couple of centuries poses new challenges for science. The emergence of new institutions, the complication of social relations and relations require the introduction of new categories, the establishment of dependencies and patterns, open up new industries and sub-sectors of this type of scientific knowledge.
What is studying?
The answer to the question of what constitutes the subject of social sciences is already inherent in it. This part of scientific knowledge concentrates its cognitive efforts on such a complex concept as society. Its essence is most fully revealed thanks to the development of sociology.
The latter is often represented as a science of society. However, such a broad interpretation of the subject of this discipline does not allow a complete picture of it.
What is society and sociology?
The answer to this question was tried by many researchers of both modernity and past centuries. Modern sociology can "boast" a huge number of theories and concepts that explain the essence of the concept of "society." The latter cannot consist of only one individual, an indispensable condition here is the totality of several creatures that must certainly be in the process of interaction. That is why today scientists represent society as a kind of “clot” of all kinds of connections and interactions that entangle the world of human relations. There are a number of distinctive characteristics of society:
- The presence of a certain social community, reflecting the social side of life, the social uniqueness of relations and various kinds of interactions.
- The presence of regulatory bodies, which sociologists call social institutions, the latter are the most stable relations and relationships. A striking example of such an institution is the family.
- Special social space. Territorial categories are not applicable here, since society may go beyond them.
- Self-sufficiency is a characteristic that makes it possible to distinguish a society from other similar social entities.
Given the detailed idea of the main category of sociology, one can expand the idea of it as a science. This is not just a science about society, but also an integrated system of knowledge about various social institutions, relationships, and communities.
Social sciences study society, forming a diverse view of it. Each considers the object for its own part: political science - political, economics - economic, cultural studies - cultural, etc.
Causes of occurrence
Since the 16th century, the development of scientific knowledge has become quite dynamic, and by the middle of 19, a process of differentiation has been observed in science that has already separated. The essence of the latter was that, in line with scientific knowledge, individual branches began to take shape. The foundation for their formation and, in fact, the reason for separation was the allocation of the object, subject and research methods. Based on these components, disciplines were concentrated around two main areas of human life: nature and society.
What are the reasons for isolating from scientific knowledge what is now known as social science? This is primarily the changes that took place in society in the 16-17th century. It is then that its formation begins in the form in which it has survived to the present day. The outdated structures of traditional society are being replaced by a massive one, which requires increased attention, since it became necessary not only to understand social processes, but also to be able to manage them.
Another factor contributing to the emergence of social sciences was the active development of the natural sciences, which in some way “provoked” the emergence of the former. It is known that one of the characteristic features of scientific knowledge of the late 19th century was the so-called naturalistic understanding of society and the processes taking place in it. A feature of this approach was that social scientists tried to explain within the categories and methods of the natural sciences. Then there is sociology, which its creator - Auguste Comte - calls social physics. A scientist, studying society, is trying to apply natural scientific methods to it. Thus, social science is a system of scientific knowledge that developed later than natural (natural) and developed under its direct influence.
The development of social sciences
The rapid development of knowledge about society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was due to the desire to find leverage to control it in a rapidly changing world. Natural sciences, unable to cope with the explanation of social facts and processes, reveal their failure and limitation. The formation and development of social sciences provide answers to many questions of both the past and the present. New processes and phenomena that take place in the world require new approaches to the study, as well as the use of the latest technologies and techniques. All this stimulates the development of both scientific knowledge in general and social sciences in particular.
Considering that the natural sciences have become the stimulus for the development of social sciences, one should find out how to distinguish one from the other.
Nature and Society Sciences: Distinctive Features
The main difference that allows one or another knowledge to be assigned to a certain group is, of course, the object of research. In other words, what science focuses on, in this case, are two different spheres of being.
It is known that the natural sciences arose earlier than the social sciences, and their methods influenced the development of the methodology of the latter. Its development took place in a different cognitive channel - by understanding the processes taking place in society, in contrast to the explanation that nature sciences offer.
Another feature that emphasizes the differences between the natural and social sciences is to ensure the objectivity of the process of cognition. In the first case, the scientist is outside the subject of research, observing it “from the side”. In the second, he often himself is a participant in the processes that occur in society. Here, objectivity is ensured by comparison with universal values and norms: cultural, moral, religious, political and others.
What sciences are classified as social?
Immediately, we note that there are some difficulties in determining where to relate a particular science. Modern scientific knowledge gravitates to the so-called interdisciplinarity, when sciences borrow methods from each other. That is why it is sometimes difficult to attribute science to one or another group: both social and natural sciences have a number of characteristics that make them related.
Since social sciences occurred later than the natural ones, at the initial stage of their development, many scientists believed that it was possible to study society and the processes occurring in it using natural-scientific methods. A striking example is sociology, which was called social physics. Later, with the development of their own system of methods, social (social) sciences departed from the natural sciences.
Another feature that unites these branches of science is that each of them acquires knowledge in the same ways, among which:
- a system of such general scientific methods as observation, modeling, experiment;
- logical methods of cognition: analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, etc .;
- reliance on scientific facts, the consistency and consistency of judgments, the uniqueness of the concepts used and the rigor of their definitions.
Also, both spheres of science are related by how they differ from other types and forms of knowledge: the validity and systematic nature of the knowledge gained, their objectivity, etc.
The system of scientific knowledge about society
The whole set of sciences studying society is sometimes combined into one, which is called social science. This discipline, being complex, allows you to form a general idea of society and the place of personality in it. It is formed on the basis of knowledge about various areas of human activity : economics, politics, culture, psychology and others. In other words, social science is an integrated system of social sciences that forms the idea of such a complex and diverse phenomenon as society, the roles and functions of a person in it.
Classification of Social Sciences
Based on what social sciences belong to any level of knowledge about society or give an idea of almost all areas of its life, scientists divided them into several groups:
- the first includes those sciences that give general ideas about society itself, the laws of its development, the main components, etc. (sociology, philosophy);
- the second covers those disciplines that study one side of society (economics, political science, cultural studies, ethics, etc.);
- the third group includes sciences that permeate all areas of social life (history, jurisprudence).
Sometimes social sciences are divided into two areas: social and humanitarian. Both of them are closely interconnected, because one way or another they are related to society. The first characterizes the most general patterns of social processes, and the second refers to the subjective level, which explores a person with his values, motives, goals, intentions, etc.
Thus, we can indicate that social sciences study society in a general, wider aspect, as part of the material world, as well as in a narrow one - at the level of the state, nation, family, associations or social groups.
The most famous social sciences
Given the fact that modern society is a rather complex and diverse phenomenon, it is impossible to study it within the framework of one discipline. This situation can be explained on the basis that the number of relations and ties in society today is huge. In our life, we all encounter such areas as: economy, politics, law, culture, language, history, etc. All this diversity is a vivid manifestation of how versatile modern society is. That is why at least 10 social sciences can be cited, each of which characterizes one of the sides of society: sociology, political science, history, economics, jurisprudence, pedagogy, cultural studies, psychology, geography, anthropology.
There is no doubt that sociology is the source of basic information about society. It is she who reveals the essence of this multifaceted object of study. In addition, today political science, which characterizes the political sphere, has gained enough fame.
Jurisprudence allows you to learn how to regulate relations in society using the rules of conduct enshrined in the state in the form of legal norms. And psychology allows you to do this using other mechanisms, studying the psychology of the crowd, group and person.
Thus, each of the 10 social sciences explores society on its part with its own research methods.
Scientific publications publishing social sciences research
One of the most famous is the journal Social Sciences and the Present. This is today one of the few publications that allows you to get acquainted with a fairly wide range of different directions of modern science about society. There are articles on sociology and history, political science and philosophy, research that raises issues of a cultural and psychological plan.
The main distinguishing feature of the publication is the possibility of placement and acquaintance with interdisciplinary research, which is carried out at the junction of various scientific fields. Today, a globalizing world makes its demands: a scientist must go beyond the narrow framework of his industry and take into account current trends in the development of world society as a single organism.