social science

Examples of social science in the following topics:

• Is Economics a Science?

  • Economics is a social science that assesses the relationship between the consumption and production of goods and services in an environment of finite resources.
  • The discipline of economics evolved in the mid-19th century through the combination of political economy, social science and philosophy and gained entrenchment with the increased scrutiny of the asymmetric financial and welfare distribution attributed to sovereign rule.
  • As in other social sciences, economics does incorporate mathematics in the theoretical and analytics framework of the discipline.
  • The use of mathematics in economics increased the quantitative analysis inherent in the discipline; however, given the discipline's essentially social science roots, many economists from John Maynard Keynes to Robert Heilbroner and others criticized the broad use of mathematical models for human behavior, arguing that some human choices can not be modeled or evaluated in a mathematical equation.
  • The underlying components of economic theory can also be applied to variety of other subjects, such as crime, education, the family, law, politics, religion, social institutions, war, and science.

• Introduction to Microeconomics

  • The evolution of processes to solve the provisioning problem takes place in a social context.
  • The psychology of individuals is also fundamental to the social system.
  • During the 19th century, the social sciences emerged and separate disciplines were carved out.
  • Economics, psychology, sociology, politics, anthropology and other branches of social science developed as separate fields of study.
  • An alternative perspective is the social context of provisioning.

• Introduction to Optimization and Markets

  • Economics can be viewed as a social science or as a tool for decision science.

• Role of Individual in the Community

  • In economics (and social sciences more generally), the nature of the role of the individual in the community or state has been a persistent question.
  • Every society must address the question (either implicitly or explicitly), "How can the autonomy (or freedom or liberty) of an individual be maintained and at the same time provide for the commonweal (social welfare)?

• Explanation, Prediction and Storytelling

  • Explanation and prediction are two of major objectives of science.
  • Second is the problem; "science, and particularly social science, abound in rules-of-thumb that yield highly accurate predictions about both natural and social events despite the fact that we may have absolutely no idea why these rules-of-thumb work as well as they do" (Ibid).
  • Whether explaining or predicting, science places value on precision and rigor of the process.
  • The other, empirical science theory focuses on explaining past observations and predicting future ones.
  • In addition to explanation and prediction, science and the stories of science also create, shape and transmit individual and social values.

• Social Interaction

  • The protection of the autonomy of the individual while coordinating social behavior has been an important goal of most great writers on social topics.
  • These interactions give rise to social institutions.
  • The study of these interactions and institutions is "social science. " Human interaction can be studied from a variety of perspectives.
  • Sociology, political science, law, history, psychology, religion, anthropology and economics are examples of social sciences.
  • While economics specializes in the study of the processes that coordinate human behavior as it allocates scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants, its relationship to other social sciences should not be overlooked.

• Brief Survey of Epistemology

  • Thomas Kuhn [The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2cd ed, 1962,1970] offers another explanation for the evolution and change of scientific thought in the "hard sciences. " His explanation is often applied to economics and social sciences.
  • He argues that a science operates within a paradigm.
  • In this manner "science progresses. "
  • Social monotony thus implies cosmic monotony - or 'objectivity,' as the latter is called today" (Feyerabend, p 260).
  • Science (and economics) is not free from ideology.

• Introduction to Provisioning

  • Economics as a provisioning problem includes the allocation problem but includes and analysis of the social infrastructure, knowledge and ideological framework in which economic behavior occurs.
  • Individuals pursue their objectives in a social context.
  • Science and technology determine the known feasible alternatives that compose the choice set.
  • The social values often promote or restrain the uses of knowledge.
  • What may appear as a major individual accomplishment is often one step in a social process.

• Milton Friedman

  • Friedman argues that economics can be a positive science.
  • The structure of this positive science, like all positive sciences, consists of two parts; first, is a language and second, is a "body of substantive hypothesis designed to abstract essential features of complex reality" (Ibid. p 7).
  • This component or element in positive science may be evaluated by formal logic to determine if it is consistent and complete.
  • More than other scientists, social scientists need to be conscious about their methodology" (Friedman, p 40).

• Deirdre McCloskey

  • McCloskey charges that as a result of attempts to create and follow a modern science, "modernism" has become a dominant theme.
  • "Modernism views science as axiomatic and mathematical and takes the realm of science to be separate from the realm of form, value, beauty, goodness, and all unmeasurable quantity" (McCloskey, 1985, p 6).
  • It is "functionalist and given to social engineering and utilitarianism, the modernist is antihistorical, uninterested in cultural or intellectual traditions" (McCloskey, 1985, p 6).
  • "Like other arts and sciences, that is, economics uses the whole rhetorical tetrad: fact, logic, metaphor, and story.
  • The allegedly scientific half of the tetrad, the fact and logic, falls short of an adequate economic science, or even a science of rocks or stars.