Social science

Social science (or the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within
those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. It now
encompasses a wide array of additional academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics,
management, communication studies, psychology, culturology, and political science.[1]

The majority of positivist social scientists use methods resembling those used in the natural sciences as tools for understanding societies, and so define
science in its stricter modern sense. Speculative social scientists, otherwise known as interpretivist scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or
symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its broader sense.[2] In modern academic
practice, researchers are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies (combining both quantitative and qualitative research).[3] To gain a deeper
understanding of complex human behavior in digital environments, social science disciplines have increasingly integrated interdisciplinary approaches,
big data, and computational tools.[4] The term social research has also acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners from various disciplines share
similar goals and methods.[5]

History
The history of the social sciences began in the Age of Enlightenment after 1651,[6] which saw a revolution within natural philosophy, changing the basic
framework by which individuals understood what was scientific. Social sciences came forth from the moral philosophy of the time and were influenced by
the Age of Revolutions, such as the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution.[7] The social sciences developed from the sciences (experimental
and applied), or the systematic knowledge-bases or prescriptive practices, relating to the social improvement of a group of interacting entities.[8][9]

The beginnings of the social sciences in the 18th century are reflected in the grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with articles from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and
other pioneers. The growth of the social sciences is also reflected in other specialized encyclopedias. The term "social science" was coined in French by
Mirabeau in 1767, before becoming a distinct conceptual field in the nineteenth century.[10] Social science was influenced by positivism,[7] focusing on
knowledge based on actual positive sense experience and avoiding the negative; metaphysical speculation was avoided. Auguste Comte used the term
science sociale to describe the field, taken from the ideas of Charles Fourier; Comte also referred to the field as social physics.[7][11]

Following this period, five paths of development sprang forth in the social sciences, influenced by Comte in other fields.[7] One route that was taken was
the rise of social research. Large statistical surveys were undertaken in various parts of the United States and Europe. Another route undertaken was
initiated by Émile Durkheim, studying "social facts", and Vilfredo Pareto, opening metatheoretical ideas and individual theories. A third means
developed, arising from the methodological dichotomy present, in which social phenomena were identified with and understood; this was championed by
figures such as Max Weber.[12] The fourth route taken, based in economics, was developed and furthered economic knowledge as a hard science. The last
path was the correlation of knowledge and social values; the antipositivism and verstehen sociology of Max Weber firmly demanded this distinction. In
this route, theory (description) and prescription were non-overlapping formal discussions of a subject.[13][14]

The foundation of social sciences in the West implies conditioned relationships between progressive and traditional spheres of knowledge. In some
contexts, such as the Italian one, sociology slowly affirms itself and experiences the difficulty of affirming a strategic knowledge beyond philosophy and
theology.[15]

Around the start of the 20th century, Enlightenment philosophy was challenged in various quarters. After the use of classical theories since the end of the
scientific revolution, various fields substituted mathematics studies for experimental studies and examining equations to build a theoretical structure.
The development of social science subfields became very quantitative in methodology. The interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary nature of scientific
inquiry into human behaviour, social and environmental factors affecting it, made many of the natural sciences interested in some aspects of social
science methodology.[16] Examples of boundary blurring include emerging disciplines like social research of medicine, sociobiology, neuropsychology,
bioeconomics and the history and sociology of science. Increasingly, quantitative research and qualitative methods are being integrated in the study of
human action and its implications and consequences. In the first half of the 20th century, statistics became a free-standing discipline of applied
mathematics.[17] Statistical methods were used confidently.

In the contemporary period, Karl Popper and Talcott Parsons influenced the furtherance of the social sciences.[7] Researchers continue to search for a
unified consensus on what methodology might have the power and refinement to connect a proposed "grand theory" with the various midrange theories
that, with considerable success, continue to provide usable frameworks for massive, growing data banks; for more, see consilience. The social sciences will
for the foreseeable future be composed of different zones in the research of, and sometimes distinct in approach toward, the field.[7]

The term "social science" may refer either to the specific sciences of society established by thinkers such as Comte, Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, or more
generally to all disciplines outside of "noble science" and arts. By the late 19th century, the academic social sciences were constituted of five fields:
jurisprudence and amendment of the law, education, health, economy and trade, and art.[8]

Around the start of the 21st century, the expanding domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism.[18]

A distinction is usually drawn between the social sciences and the humanities. Classicist Allan Bloom writes in The Closing of the American Mind (1987):

Social science and humanities have a mutual contempt for one another, the former looking down on the latter as unscientific, the latter
regarding the former as philistine. [...] The difference comes down to the fact that social science really wants to be predictive, meaning that man
is predictable, while the humanities say that he is not.[19]