SOCIAL SCIENCE

any discipline or branch of science that deals with human behaviour in its social and cultural aspects. The social sciences include cultural (or social) anthropology, sociology, social psychology, political science, and economics. Also frequently included are social and economic geography and those areas of education that deal with the social contexts of learning and the relation of the school to the social order. History is regarded by many as a social science, and certain areas of historical study are almost indistinguishable from work done in the social sciences. Most historians, however, consider history as one of the humanities. It is generally best, in any case, to consider history as marginal to the humanities and social sciences, since its insights and techniques pervade both. The study of comparative law may also be regarded as a part of the social sciences, although it is ordinarily pursued in schools of law rather than in departments or schools containing most of the other social sciences. Since the 1950s the term behavioral sciences has often been applied to the disciplines designated as the social sciences. Those who favour this term do so in part because these disciplines are thus brought closer to some of the sciences, such as physical anthropology and physiological psychology, which also deal with human behaviour. Whether the term behavioral sciences will in time supplant social sciences or whether it will, as neologisms so often have before, fade away is impossible to say. For the purposes of this article, the two terms may be considered synonymous. Although, strictly speaking, the social sciences do not precede the 19th centurythat is, as distinct and recognized disciplines of thoughtone must go back farther in time for the origins of some of their fundamental ideas and objectives. In the largest sense, the origins go all the way back to the ancient Greeks and their rationalist inquiries into the nature of man, state, and morality. The heritage of both Greece and Rome is a powerful one in the history of social thought as it is in so many other areas of Western society. Very probably, apart from the initial Greek determination to study all things in the spirit of dispassionate and rational inquiry, there would be no social sciences today. True, there have been long periods of time, as during the Western Middle Ages, when the Greek rationalist temper was lacking. But the recovery of this temper, through texts of the great classical philosophers, is the very essence of the Renaissance and the Age of Reason in modern European history. With the Age of Reason, in the 17th and 18th centuries, one may begin. any discipline or branch of science that deals with the social and cultural aspects of human behaviour. The social sciences generally include economics, political science, sociology, and social psychology. In the later 20th century, the term behavioral sciences has become more and more commonly used for the disciplines cited as social sciences. Those who favour the term do so in part because these disciplines are thus brought closer to some of the sciences, such as physical anthropology and linguistics, which also deal with human behaviour. Economics is concerned chiefly with the description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. One major branch of the field is microeconomics, which deals with the behaviour of individual areas or units of activity, such as individual farmers, business firms, and traders. Macroeconomics, on the other hand, studies whole systems, especially with regard to general levels of output and income and to the interrelations between different sectors of an economy. Political science is most generally understood to mean the systematic study of government processes by the application of scientific methods of analysis. More narrowly and traditionally, the field has been thought of as the study of the state and of the organs and institutions through which the state functions. International relations is a branch of political science that is concerned with the relations between nations and with such nations' foreign policies. Sociology comprises the scientific study of society, social institutions, and social relationships; the field may be specifically defined as the systematic study of the development, structure, interaction, and collective behaviour of organized groups of human beings. A related field, social psychology, deals with the manner in which the personality, attitudes, motivations, and behaviour of the individual are influenced by social groups. Cultural anthropology deals with human culture, especially with respect to social structure, language, law, politics, religion, magic, art, and technology. In particular, cultural anthropology is concerned with generalizing about patterns in human behaviour and with achieving a total description of social and cultural phenomena. Comparative law may also be regarded as a part of the social sciences. This field involves the systematic comparative study of the legal principles, institutions, and procedures of different nations and cultures. Additional reading Preserved Smith, A History of Modern Culture, 2 vol. (193034, reprinted 1962), covering the years 15431776, is a classic in the history of ideas and the best single work on the period leading up to the emergence of the individual social sciences. James Westfall Thompson, A History of Historical Writing, 2 vol. (1942), is useful in this respect also. On the age immediately preceding the rise of the social sciences, the best study by far is Lester G. Crocker, Nature and Culture: Ethical Thought in the French Enlightenment (1963), and An Age of Crisis: Man and World in Eighteenth Century French Thought (1959), recommended to be read or consulted in that order. The best general work on the history of the social sciences and the history of social philosophy in the West is Harry Elmer Barnes and Howard Becker, Social Thought from Lore to Science, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1952).Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: 17891848 (1962), is an important and fascinating treatment of the social, cultural, and intellectual aspects of the age in which the individual social sciences emerged in western Europe. Robert A. Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition (1966), although concerned primarily with sociology, deals with the specific ways in which the ideologies and themes of the democratic and industrial revolutions became translated into social theory. The same author's Social Change and History (1969) deals in detail with the incorporation of the theory of social evolution into the social sciences of the 19th century. For the rise and development of the individual social sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries, the following works are recommended. (Anthropology): Robert H. Lowie, The History of Ethnological Theory (1937); and Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture (1968). (Economics): Erich Roll, A History of Economic Thought, 3rd ed. rev. (1954); and the extremely readable Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, 3rd ed. (1967). (Political science): George Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 3rd ed. (1959), best on the three centuries preceding the 20th; Francis W. Coker, Recent Political Thought (1934), excellent for the early 20th century; and Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (eds.), History of Political Philosophy (1963). (Sociology): Barnes and Becker, referred to above, for detailed information on the history of sociology in the 19th and early 20th centuries; Nisbet, also referred to above, dealing with the relation between political ideologies and the currents of sociological thought in the late 19th century; and Lewis A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought (1971), a very good general history of sociology in 19th- and 20th-century Europe and America. (Social psychology): Fay Berger Karpf, American Social Psychology: Its Origins, Development and European Background (1932), the best account of social psychology in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and Thomas C. Wiegele, Biology and the Social Sciences (1982), concerning the effect of biological research on social science disciplines.