Science, as one of the forms of knowledge and explanation of the world, is constantly evolving: the number of its branches and directions is steadily growing. This trend is especially clearly 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 associate its occurrence with the development of science in general, which began in the 16th-17th centuries. It was then that science embarked on its own path of development, combining and absorbing the entire system of near-scientific knowledge that had been formed at that time.
It should be noted that social science is a holistic system of scientific knowledge, which at its core 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 ties 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.
Learning what?
The answer to the question of what constitutes the subject of the social sciences is already in itself. 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 quite often presented as a science of society. However, such a broad interpretation of the subject of this discipline does not allow you to get a complete picture of it.
What is society and sociology?
Many researchers of both modern and past centuries have tried to answer this question. Modern sociology can "boast" of 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 beings, which must certainly be in the process of interaction. That is why today scientists present society as a kind of "clump" 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 public side of life, socialoriginality of relationships and various kinds of interactions.
- The presence of regulatory bodies, which sociologists call social institutions, the latter are the most stable connections and relationships. A striking example of such an institution is the family.
- Special social space. Territorial categories are inapplicable here, since society can go beyond them.
- Self-sufficiency is a characteristic that distinguishes a society from other similar social entities.
Given the detailed presentation of the main category of sociology, it is possible to expand the idea of it as a science. This is no longer just a science of society, but also an integrated system of knowledge about various social institutions, relationships, communities.
Social sciences study society, forming a versatile view of it. Each examines the object from its own side: political science - political, economics - economic, cultural studies - cultural, etc.
Causes of occurrence
Starting from the 16th century, the development of scientific knowledge becomes quite dynamic, and by the middle of the 19th, a process of differentiation is observed in the already separated science. The essence of the latter was that in line with scientific knowledge separate branches began to take shape. The foundation for their formation and, in fact, the reason for the separation was the allocation of the object, subject and methods of research. Based on these components, disciplines were concentrated around two main areas of human life: nature andsociety.
What are the reasons for separating from scientific knowledge what is known today as social science? First of all, these are the changes that took place in society in the 16th-17th centuries. It was then that its formation began in the form in which it has survived to this day. The outdated structures of the traditional society are being replaced by a mass society, 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 the social sciences was the active development of the natural sciences, which in some way "provoked" the emergence of the first. 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 framework of the categories and methods of the natural sciences. Then sociology appears, which its creator, Auguste Comte, calls social physics. A scientist, studying society, tries to apply natural scientific methods to it. Thus, social science is a system of scientific knowledge that took shape later than natural science and developed under its direct influence.
Development of social sciences
The rapid development of knowledge about society in the late 19th - early 20th century was due to the desire to find the levers to control it in a rapidly changing world. Natural Sciences,unable to cope with the explanation of social facts and processes, they reveal their inconsistency and limitations. The formation and development of the social sciences make it possible to obtain 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 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.
Given that the natural sciences have become a stimulus for the development of the social sciences, it is necessary to figure out how to distinguish one from the other.
Nature and social sciences: distinctive characteristics
The main difference that makes it possible to attribute this or that knowledge to a certain group is, of course, the object of study. In other words, what the attention of science is directed to, in this case, these are two different spheres of being.
It is known that the natural sciences arose before the social ones, and their methods influenced the development of the methodology of the latter. Its development took place in a different cognitive direction - by understanding the processes taking place in society, in contrast to the explanation offered by the sciences of nature.
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 outside". In the second, he himself is often a participant in those processes thattake place in society. Here objectivity is ensured by comparison with universal human values and norms: cultural, moral, religious, political and others.
What are social sciences?
We note right away that there are some difficulties in determining where to attribute this or that science. Modern scientific knowledge gravitates toward the so-called interdisciplinarity, when the sciences borrow methods from each other. That is why it is sometimes difficult to attribute science to one group or another: both social and natural sciences have a number of characteristics that make them related.
Since the 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 taking place 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, the social (social) sciences moved away from the natural sciences.
Another feature that unites these branches of science is that each of them acquires knowledge in the same ways, including:
- 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, consistency and consistency of judgments, unambiguity of the concepts used and the rigor of their definitions.
Also, both spheres of science have in common what they differ from other types and forms of knowledge: validityand consistency of the acquired knowledge, their objectivity, etc.
The system of scientific knowledge about society
The whole set of sciences that study 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 the individual in it. It is formed on the basis of knowledge about various spheres of human life: economics, politics, culture, psychology and others. In other words, social science is an integrated system of social sciences that forms an 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 refer to any level of knowledge about society or give an idea of almost all spheres of its life, scientists have divided them into several groups:
- the first includes those sciences that give general ideas about society itself, the patterns of its development, the main components, etc. (sociology, philosophy);
- the second covers those disciplines that explore 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 the social sciences are divided into two areas: the social sciences and the humanities. Both of them are closely interconnected, because one way or another they are related to society. The first characterizes the most general patterns of flowsocial processes, and the second refers to the subjective level, which examines a person with his values, motives, goals, intentions, etc.
Thus, it can be indicated that the social sciences study society in a general, broader 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.
Most famous social sciences
Given 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 based on the fact that the number of relationships and connections in society today is enormous. We all come across in our lives such areas as: economics, politics, law, culture, language, history, etc. All this diversity is a clear manifestation of how diverse modern society is. That is why at least 10 social sciences can be cited, each of which characterizes one of the aspects of society: sociology, political science, history, economics, jurisprudence, pedagogy, cultural studies, psychology, geography, anthropology.
There is no doubt that the source of basic information about society is sociology. It is she who reveals the essence of this multifaceted object of study. In addition, political science, which characterizes the political sphere, has become quite famous today.
Jurisprudence allows you to learn how to regulate relations in society with the help of rulesbehavior enshrined by the state in the form of legal norms. And psychology allows you to do this with the help of other mechanisms, studying the psychology of the crowd, group and person.
Thus, each of the 10 social sciences explores society from its own side with its own research methods.
Scientific publications publishing social science research
One of the most famous is the journal Social Sciences and Modernity. Today, this is one of the few publications that allows you to get acquainted with a fairly wide range of various areas of modern science of society. There are articles on sociology and history, political science and philosophy, studies that raise cultural and psychological issues.
The main distinguishing feature of the publication is the possibility of placing and getting acquainted with interdisciplinary research conducted at the intersection of various scientific fields. Today, the globalizing world makes its own demands: a scientist must go beyond the narrow confines of his industry and take into account modern trends in the development of the world society as a single organism.
