Comprehensive Study Notes on Social Science, Its Historical Foundations, and Scientific Research Methods

Defining the Three Great Branches of Human Knowledge

Social Science

  • "Man is a social animal" – Aristotle. The quotation frames the central concern of Social Science: explaining collective human life.
  • Formal definition – the body of knowledge concerned with the methodical study of society, social phenomena, and their impact on people’s lives.
  • Dual nature reflected in its etymology
    • Society / Social – an organized group of individuals; companionship or association.
    • Science (scientia = knowledge) – a logically-ordered body of knowledge and the method used to obtain it.
  • Core mandate: empirical analysis that explains and predicts social phenomena.

Principal Social-Science Disciplines

  • Anthropology
  • Economics
  • Psychology
  • Sociology
  • Geography
  • History
  • Political Science
  • Demography

Natural Science

  • Seeks lawful explanations of natural events (e.g., earthquakes, weather, atomic particles, cellular composition).
  • Major fields: Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Physics.

Humanities

  • Academic disciplines that study human culture and creative expression rather than natural processes or social relations.
  • Representative fields: Art, Music, Literature.
    • Example: Jose Rizal’s novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo expose Spanish-era abuses and cultivate nationalist consciousness.

Overlap Between Social Science and Humanities

  • Both center on human life and culture; methodologies differ (empirical vs. interpretive) but insights complement each other.

Historical Emergence of Social Science

Age of Enlightenment ("Age of Reason")

  • 17th–18th-century European movement—especially vibrant in Britain and France—emphasised reason as the tool to reform society, government, and humanity.

Foundational Thinkers & Concepts

  • Franz Boas – “Father of modern anthropology.” Championed Cultural Relativism: all cultures are equally valid; no hierarchy of superior/inferior cultures.
    • Advocated against discrimination toward indigenous peoples, immigrants, Blacks, and other marginalized Americans.
  • Aristotle – Already regarded humans as naturally political; later hailed as Father of Political Science.
  • Plato – In The Republic sketched an ideal political order; pioneer of political inquiry.
  • Kautilya (Chanakya) – Ancient Indian thinker; argued large population brings military, political, and economic strength. Position later echoed by Ibn Khaldun.
  • Thomas Robert Malthus – An Essay on the Principle of Population warned of population growth outstripping resources.
  • John Graunt – Founder of Demography; Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality used London death records to discern population patterns.
  • Adam Smith – Father of Economics. Doctrine of laissez-faire: \text{minimal government intervention} leads to a self-regulating free-market economy.
  • Industrial Revolution – Rapid 18th–19th-century industrialisation & urbanisation spurred new economic theories.
    • David Ricardo applied laissez-faire to wages ("iron law of wages").
    • Karl Marx critiqued capitalism; proposed socialism to secure labour rights.

Disciplinary Prototypes in the Classical World

  • Geography – Study of interactions between environment & human activity.
    • Eratosthenes – Chief Alexandria librarian; first calculated Earth’s circumference \approx 40\,000\,\text{km}.
    • Coined and practiced "geography"; dubbed Father of Geography.
  • History
    • Herodotus – "Father of History"; introduced systematic inquiry and storytelling.
    • Thucydides – Improved Herodotean methods; insisted on factual precision when chronicling the Peloponnesian War.
  • Linguistics
    • Sophists – Peripatetic teachers of rhetoric, grammar, poetry, mathematics, and music; pioneers of language analysis.
    • Aristotle – Linked rhetoric & linguistics in Poetics.
    • Noam Chomsky – Modern Father of Linguistics; transformational-generative grammar revolutionised formal linguistics.
  • Psychology
    • Wilhelm Wundt – Founded first experimental psychology lab (Leipzig, 1879); first self-described “psychologist.”
    • Ivan Pavlov – Russian physiologist; classical conditioning demonstrated associative learning in animals.
    • Sigmund Freud – Austrian neurologist; explored the unconscious, positing it as source of human action.
  • Sociology – Systematic study of social interaction; emerged later (Comte, Durkheim) but conceptually foreshadowed above.

Scientific Research in the Social Sciences (Lesson 3)

Definition

Scientific research is a systematic, standardized sequence of practices for constructing knowledge: accurate observation → explanation → generalisation.

Experimental Technique (Empirical Science)

  • Validates or refines prior theories by subjecting them to objective, replicable tests.

Four Global Phases of a Research Project (Bhattacherjee 2012)

  1. Exploration – Identify & refine problem/questions.
  2. Research Design – Create an explicit blueprint for data collection, analysis, and interpretation.
  3. Research Execution – Gather & analyse data according to design.
  4. Research Report – Interpret findings, draw conclusions, relate to theory, and disseminate.

Phase 2: Research Design in Detail

  • Logical plan ensuring the study answers its questions or tests its hypotheses.

Quantitative (Positivist) Research Designs

Purpose: theory testing by examining relationships among variables through numerical data & statistics.

Survey Research (Non-Experimental)

  • Tools: questionnaires or tests.
  • Provides numeric description of beliefs, attitudes, behaviours across a population sample.
  • Two temporal formats
    1. Cross-Sectional – variables measured simultaneously.
    2. Longitudinal / Field Survey – variables measured across multiple time points.

Experimental Research (Cause-and-Effect)

  • Manipulates an independent variable (treatment) and observes effect on dependent variable under controlled conditions.
    1. True Experimental – groups formed by random assignment → strongest internal validity.
    2. Quasi-Experimental – no random assignment; more practical but weaker causal claims.

Qualitative (Interpretative) Research Designs

Purpose: theory building by uncovering subjective meanings participants give to phenomena.

General process: formulate open questions → collect rich data in natural settings → identify themes → interpret lived meaning.

Narrative Research

  • Collect and restory life experiences of a small number of individuals into a coherent chronological or thematic account.

Phenomenology

  • Describe the essence of a shared lived experience; bracket researcher presuppositions through "epoché".

Ethnography / Field Research / Participant Observation

  • Immersive study of cultural patterns over 8 \text{ months} \text{ to } 2 \text{ years}.
  • Researcher participates in daily life while making systematic observations.

Case Study (Case Research)

  • In-depth, contextual examination of a single (or few) bounded system(s) across time.
  • Useful for both theory generation and theory testing.

Mixed-Methods Designs

  • Concurrently integrates quantitative and qualitative data with equal priority.
  • Objective: achieve a more comprehensive understanding than either approach alone.

Ethical, Philosophical & Practical Implications

  • Cultural Relativism obliges researchers to evaluate practices within cultural contexts, resisting ethnocentric judgements.
  • Laissez-faire vs. Socialism debate frames policy choices about government intervention, markets, and workers’ rights.
  • The scientific method in social research demands transparency, replication, and critical scrutiny to curb bias—mirroring Enlightenment ideals of reason and evidence.
  • Industrialisation illustrates how technological change reshapes economic theories (Ricardo, Marx) and social policies—an enduring lesson for contemporary digital revolutions.

Integrative Links to Earlier Lectures

  • Lesson 1 laid out the tripartite structure of knowledge (Social Science / Natural Science / Humanities) now used to classify research designs.
  • Lesson 2’s historical survey underpins Lesson 3’s methodological focus: each discipline’s founders sought systematic inquiry—the ancestor of today’s research designs.
    • Example: Graunt’s mortality tables prefigure modern demographic surveys; Wundt’s laboratory anticipates experimental psychology; Boas’s fieldwork foreshadows ethnography.

Key Take-Away Points

  1. Social Science arises from Enlightenment efforts to apply reason and empirical evidence to societal issues.
  2. Distinct yet overlapping with Natural Science and Humanities, it relies on both quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
  3. Historical pioneers (Aristotle to Chomsky) established the major disciplines and provided normative, methodological, and ethical foundations.
  4. Contemporary research follows a four-phase cycle and employs designs chosen to fit either theory-testing (positivist) or theory-building (interpretative) goals—or both via mixed methods.
  5. Understanding these intellectual lineages and research logics equips scholars to conduct rigorous, culturally sensitive, and socially impactful studies.