Society is an incredibly interesting subject to study, since understanding the features of its functioning helps ordinary people to significantly improve their lives and have a positive impact on the world. To begin to consider society as a historically and culturally developed phenomenon, it is necessary to understand what sciences study society. And in order to get an answer to this question, it is necessary to turn to such a complex of sciences as social science, which includes at least six basic scientific disciplines.
This is all that is usually studied in universities: philosophy, social psychology, political science, economics, jurisprudence, as well as sociology. All these sciences study society from one side or another. Here are the representatives of socionomic professions (related to people) which sciences are studying! Social science is a large-scale discipline, the purpose of which is not to consider individual social phenomena, but as integrity, from the standpoint of different sciences.
But it’s important to understand that studying aspects of society’s life in this way will be superficial, since many of them, when examined in more detail, are contradictory. But a general education can be obtained through the study of social science, and then you can hit poorly educated people with your erudition. Moreover, this discipline allows you to know the direction of the search for the answer to the question, which sciences study society.
What are the specifics of cognition of social phenomena
In general, the characteristics of a person’s knowledge of the world are always the same. But when studying a specific object (it is society in our case), one should take into account a number of features that will help, or possibly hinder, from delving into any topic considered by science. And therefore, it is important to understand the specifics of cognition of social phenomena, which consists in the fact that the object and subject of study are one.
After all, all social phenomena are provoked by people who can influence them even by the very fact of studying these events and properties. For example, an unsuccessful experiment shook the public so much that the conditions for confirming the hypothesis or refuting it completely disappeared. The problem of studying social phenomena is that no matter what sciences study society, the personality factor works. Therefore, it is difficult for an object to reliably look at many phenomena. And such subjectivity does not allow to put everything into a whole picture, even within the framework of one science. As for social science as a complex of disciplines, all the more so. That is, personal experience, the worldview of the researcher significantly affects the results of the experiments, which distorts the objective reality.
Philosophy
What sciences study society and man? One of them is philosophy, which considers the universal laws of the development of the world as a whole. There are other definitions. So, philosophy is called a special form of knowledge of the world that studies the most common properties and phenomena of surrounding reality. Modern scholars do not like to call philosophy a science, since it often contains completely contradictory provisions that researchers do not even try to reconcile or find out which one is correct. Just as in physics they try to reconcile the general theory of relativity with quantum field theory with one degree or another degree of success.
But in the framework of philosophy, atheistic materialism and agnostic idealism can simultaneously exist. That is, philosophy can be called the answer to the question "what sciences study society" only conditionally. This form of knowledge of the world poses such questions.
- Do you know the world? Those who consider it possible to examine all reality completely are called Gnostics. And those who deny are agnostics.
- What is the truth? Here philosophy came up quite scientifically. Thus, complete criteria of truth were developed in the framework of epistemology - the science of knowledge.
- What is good? This question is directly related to human values, therefore it relates to such a branch of philosophy as axiology.
In general, philosophy is an excellent discipline, but there are others in answer to the question “what sciences study society”. They should also be considered.
Sociology
What sciences study society, man, social relations and institutions? Correctly related to sociology discipline. They include not only the science considered in this subsection, but also, for example, social work. But sociology is the science of society, social institutions (historical forms of its self-regulation), which aims at explaining and predicting certain social phenomena.
Social Psychology
This science is similar to sociology, but is distinguished by another subject of study - people in the framework of a particular society. And the analysis of social phenomena is done at more detailed levels - personal and interpersonal. Thus, the study of social psychology includes the analysis of interactions between people, as well as concepts such as leadership, conformism, nonconformism, and a number of others.
Law
One of the aspects of studying most of the socionomic sciences (studying society) is the system of social norms. They are religious, moral, group. And there is a special category of them - legal norms, which are a means of expressing the will of the state. Actually, jurisprudence - this is the science that studies the legal norms, the features of their functioning in relation to a particular state or as a whole. The closest connection is this discipline with social psychology, social work and sociology.
Economy
Economics is a science that studies the economic activities of society, relations related to money and property, production, distribution, exchange and consumption. This discipline is a mechanism that regulates the material side of life of each member of society.
Political science
Political science is the science of a special form of people's activities related to power relations, as well as possible political systems, institutions and norms. This science also studies the relationship between the state and its individual citizens.