Society is an incredibly interesting subject to study, as understanding how it works helps ordinary people significantly improve their lives and make a positive impact on the world. To begin to consider society as a historically and culturally established 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 main scientific disciplines.
This is everything that is usually studied in universities: philosophy, social psychology, political science, economics, law, and sociology. All these sciences study society from one side or another. Here are the representatives of socionomic professions (associated with people) which sciences they study! Social science is a largea discipline whose goal is not to consider individual social phenomena, but as a whole, from the standpoint of different sciences.
But at the same time, it is important to understand that the study of aspects of the life of society in this kind will be superficial, since many of them, upon closer examination, turn out to be contradictory. But you can get a general education with the help of studying social science, and then impress poorly educated people with your erudition. Moreover, this discipline allows you to know the direction of the search for an answer to the question of what sciences study society.
What is the specificity of the knowledge of social phenomena
In general, the features of human cognition of the surrounding world are always the same. But when studying a certain object (which is society in our case), one should take into account a number of features that will help or, perhaps, hinder to delve into any topic considered by science. And therefore it is important to understand the specifics of the cognition of social phenomena, which lies 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, a failed experiment shocked the public so much that the conditions for confirming a hypothesis or refuting it disappeared altogether. The problem of studying social phenomena is that no matter what sciences study society, the personal factor works. Consequently, it is difficult for an object to reliably look at many phenomena. And such subjectivity does not allow you to add everything into a whole picture, even within the framework ofone science. And as for social science as a complex of disciplines, even more so. That is, the 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 integrity. There are other definitions as well. So, philosophy is a special form of knowledge of the world, studying the most general properties and phenomena of the surrounding reality. Modern researchers do not like to call philosophy a science, since it often contains completely contradictory statements that researchers do not even try to reconcile or figure out which of them is correct. Just as in physics they try to reconcile the general theory of relativity with quantum field theory with varying degrees of success.
But within the framework of philosophy, both atheistic materialism and agnostic idealism can exist simultaneously. 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 we know the world? Those who consider it possible to consider the whole of reality in its entirety are called Gnostics. And those who deny are agnostics.
- What is truth? Here the philosophy approached quite scientifically. So, full-fledged criteria of truth were developed within the framework of epistemology - the science of knowledge.
- What is good? This question is directly related to human values, therefore it belongs to such a section of philosophy as axiology.
In general, philosophy is an excellent discipline, but there are others in answering the question "what sciences study society". They should also be considered.
Sociology
What sciences study society, man, social relations and institutions? That's right, disciplines related to sociology. These include not only the science considered in this subsection, but also, for example, social work. But sociology is the science of society, social institutions (historically established forms of its self-regulation), which aims to explain and predict certain social phenomena.
Social psychology
This science is similar to sociology, but stands out for another subject of study - people within a particular society. And the analysis of social phenomena is done at more detailed levels - personal and interpersonal. Thus, the scope of the study of social psychology includes the analysis of interaction between people, as well as such concepts as leadership, conformism, non-conformity and a number of others.
Jurisprudence
One aspect of the study of most of the socionomic sciences (the study of society) is the system of social norms. They are religious, moral, group. Andthere is a special category of them - legal norms, which are a means of expressing the will of the state. Actually, jurisprudence is the science that studies legal norms, the features of their functioning in relation to a particular state or as a whole. This discipline has the closest connection with social psychology, social work and sociology.
Economy
Economics is a science that studies the economic activity of society, relations related to money and property, production, distribution, exchange and consumption. This discipline is a mechanism that regulates the material side of the life of each member of society.
Political Science
Political science is the science of a special form of human activity 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.
