Social Science and Why Is It Important? Essay

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Social Science and Why Is it Important?

The definition of social science has been narrowed down to those sciences that deal with human activities and human behavior as opposed to science that studies natural phenomenon. However this division may be superfluous now because modern science has its origin from the old social sciences. Science evolved from the society which also contained many thoughts that may be out of the realm of modern science like "religion, philosophy, ideology and politics." (Williams, 2000)

Thus the scientific theories are based on a philosophical thinking that is often shaped by politics or religion. The relationship between science and other streams of human thought and science changed with the changes in scientific method which again form within the disciplines of each branch of science is different and often contradictory. (Williams, 2000)

The argument at this stage is if the social world is amenable to experiments of the scientific kind then the consideration that the social world did not emerge from the natural world but was contagious to it shows that while science may be best able to explain natural phenomenon it is not useful in any way defining or explaining human behavior. Thus seeking scientific social theories are useless. Many theorists of social science have ideally suggested the use of scientific methods for social studies. Thus positivism, functionalism, constructivism and many more theories harp on the scientific method. (Flyvbjerg, 2001) Thus sciences itself is a part of the broader spectrum of social science.

Social Science and its Methods:

The basis of all human enquiries is fundamentally to seek the absolute truth. Philosophies of science or society, it can be argued has as the fundamental aim to either prove the present concepts of reality, or bring to light new concepts that can explain the reality better than how it is perceived now. Objective existence is reality but human knowledge of it is based on the concepts and is based more on theory rather than the objective existence.

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Based on that, it can be argued that all knowledge -- scientific or otherwise is fallible and can be assailed. (Danermark; Ekstrom; Jakobsen; Karlsson, 2002)

Science also has generalizing results. Generalizations are the basis of social science research. Science uses various types of inference. (Danermark; Ekstrom; Jakobsen; Karlsson, 2002) In social sciences the analysis is always based on some conceptualization and the difference is in the chances of the results of social analysis to be reproduced again in a set of experiment is thin. The uses of social science is answered by pointing to the fact that social sciences are indicative of social life and the finding of social values and truth can cause the reduction of illusion, ignorance, and domination of dogmas and falsehoods. (Danermark; Ekstrom; Jakobsen; Karlsson, 2002) It is therefore some times possible and in some cases not possible to use the scientific methods in social science and like the physical laws of nature there cannot be built similar laws that can be the explanation of human behavior. Thus social scientific laws are impossible. (McIntyre, 1996)

There are a lot of questions that physical science as of now cannot answer and some more are unanswerable. However unanswered questions do not mean that the subject is not a science. Human behavior can be classified as simple behavior wherein the events are occurring inside the human bodies like heartbeats and other bodily functions. The second is action which is what the human does as opposed to what happens to the body. (Rosenberg, 1995)

Fundamentally the difference between action and human behavior often has no difference. Basically the purposes of all social sciences are to explain the human action and behavior. (Rosenberg, 1995) Social science thus explains action and also explains large scale events like depression and battles. This differentiation of action and behavior as….....

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