Social Science from Anthropology to History

Abstract

We all know which are the major social sciences, namely anthropology, sociology, economics, politology, and history. All the others can be accomodated in one or the other of the above. For example, linguistics can be included in anthropology, and archaeology in history. But there is considerable uncertainty as to what the social sciences are, in particular whether they are sciences at all and whether they have a methodics and a goal of their own. Thus, according to sociobiology social science is the branch of zoology that studies groups of animals, in particular humans, using exclusively some ideas and methods of biology. (Recall Ch. 3, Sect. 6.2.) Most social scientists disagree violently with this view, but they have reached no consensus on what kind of discipline social science is, or even on what it is supposed to study: individuals or groups, ideas or artifacts, particulars or patterns, the permanent or the ephemerous, conflict or cooperation, and so on. These uncertainties are often blamed on the complexity of the subject matter or referent of social science. But if we do not know for sure what the referent of a discipline is, how can we pronounce it to be complex?