Social Sciences

Social Sciences study of society and the relationship among individuals within society.

Natural Sciences is a major branch of science that deals with description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, basically based on observational and empirical evidence.

2 main branches of natural science

  • life or biological

  • science and physical science

Humanities

  • Seeks to understand “human reactions to events and the meanings humans impose on experience as a function of culture, historical era, and life history.” (Kagan 2009, 4)

  • Tend to humanize humans as they express themselves

    in a various forms

  • Refers to the study of ways in which human experience is processed and documented

  • These include art and art history, literature, language, religion, philosophy and music

Social Sciences Discipline

History

Attempts to reconstruct the past given the available sources

  • Primary source

  • Secondary source

It attempts to ascertain, record and explain facts and events that happened in the past, or traditionally it is regarded as the study of the recorded past

Herodotus of Halicarnassus

–The Histories –Greek War against Persia (Persian Wars) – 3rd decade of the 5th century

Thucydides

-Peloponnesian War

Sociology

Industrial Revolution

  • studies how people relate to each other and how they work as a whole in the larger society

  • a field of study dealing with the systematic study of patterns of human interactions.

  • The sociological perspective sees the general in the particular.

Psychology

  • Clinical

  • Developmental

  • Experimental

Clinical

– assesses and finds treatment for people with psychological disorders

Developmental

– studies intellectual, social, emotional, and moral development across a lifespan

Experimental

– studies the most basic concepts of psychology like cognition, perception, memory, and learning


Wilhelm Wundt

– Father of Modern Psychology – first in the movement to make psychology a Science.

Demography

Demography is the science and statistical study of human populations.

By investigating the three demographic processes of (1) birth (2) migration and (3) aging (including death) demographers attempts to comprehend the mechanisms behind the human population

Kautilya – commented that a large population is a source of military, political, and economic strength of the nation

Ibn Khaldin – 14th-century Arab historian (dense population growth is generally favorable to the maintenance and interest of imperial power)

Edmund Halley – earliest demographer (the 1st scientist to study a person’s likelihood of death as he or she passes through the different age groups using death statistics from across the different age groups)

Thomas Malthus – An essay on the Principle of population (1798) (its main area of inquiry is scarcity of resources)

Anthropology

Study of Humankind.

  • Physical/Biological

  • Cultural/Social

  1. Archeology

  2. Ethnography

  3. Anthropological Linguistics

    Herodotus of Halicarnassus

    – known for his works on the

    Persian Wars.

    Has travelled a great deal and

    was able to write detailed

    narratives about West Asia and

    Egypt.

Enlightenment Period

–Anthropology came of age. The period saw the flourishing of philosophy and sciences and people sought greater freedom from the Church.

Geography

  • Physical

  • Human

Geography studies the interaction between the natural environment and the people living in it.


It is during the Hellenistic period in the ancient Greco-Roman empire when ground breaking works have been done in the field of Geography.

•Extensive travels of Alexander the Great

• Eratosthenes of Cyrene – head of the Great Library in Alexandria - “ Father of Geography ” –

Geographika – depths of the sea, climate and geological history of the earth

Economics

  • Micro

  • Macro


It is a discipline that concentrates on how a particular society solves its problem of scarcity of resources.

It is a study of the efficient allocation of scarce resources in order to satisfy unlimited human needs and wants. It is a study of the efficient allocation of scarce resources in order to satisfy unlimited human needs and wants.

Enlightenment has inspired the birth of modern economics.

Political Science

  • the study of politics, power and government

Aristotle

–Politics – government and the leaders behind it, justice and slavery

• John Locke –Two Treatise of Government – representative government and the people’s right to revolution

• established after WW2 in American and European Universities

Linguistics

  • General

  • Micro

  • Macro

Philosophy and rhetoric

• it is led by the sophists of classical Greece who have given young, wealthy Greek men education in the art of public speaking