What is Social Science?

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Contents 1 Definition of Social Science 2 Article by Mark Buchanan 3 A European Research Proposal 4 References 5 Author or Authors

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Definition of Social Science

Here is a dictionary definition of social science from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/social+science.

1. The study of human society and of individual relationships in and to society.
2. A scholarly or scientific discipline that deals with such study, generally regarded as including sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, political science, and history.

Here is the first part of a Wikipedia article on Social Sciences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_sciences).

The social sciences are the fields of academic scholarship that explore aspects of human society.[1] "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences. These include: anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, political science, international studies and, in some contexts,[2] psychology. Subjects such as international relations and social work are concerned primarily with application and do not constitute social sciences per se.

Article by Mark Buchanan

Quoting from Buchanan (2010):

Every move you make, every twitter feed you update, somebody is watching you. You may not think twice about it, but if you use a social networking site, a cellphone or the internet regularly, you are leaving behind a clear digital trail that describes your behaviour, travel patterns, likes and dislikes, divulges who your friends are and reveals your mood and your opinions. In short, it tells the world an awful lot about you.

Now, as any researcher will tell you, good data is gold dust. Its absence leaves theories in the realm of speculation, and worse, poor data can lead you down blind alleys. Physics was the first science to be transformed by accurate information, first with telescopes that revealed the heavens and culminating in massive modern-day experiments like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. Biology was next, with genome sequencing throwing up so much of the stuff that genetics has turned partly into an information science.

Now the study of human behaviour is heading the same way. Social scientists have long had to rely on crude questionnaires or interviews to gather data to test their theories; methods marred by reporting bias and small survey sizes. For decades, the field has been looked down upon by some as a poor cousin to the hard sciences. The digital age is changing all that - practically overnight, the study of human behaviour and social interactions has switched, from having virtually no hard data to drowning in the stuff. As a result, an entirely different approach to social science has emerged, and studies based on it are appearing with increasing frequency. The impact has been remarkable.

A European Research Proposal

AlphaGalileo (8/2/2010). The anti-crisis project: Thinking our way to a better future. Retrieved 8/9/2010 from http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=82283&CultureCode=en. Quoting from the document:

The project is being coordinated by a team of scientists led by physicist, traffic scientist, and sociologist Dirk Helbing of ETH Zurich. "It’s time to explore social life on Earth, and everything it relates to, in the same ambitious way that we have spent the last century or more exploring our physical world," he says. Their proposal, submitted for the European Commission's Flagship Programme, aims to assemble expertise across the whole spectrum of science—from physics, computer science, environmental science and economics through psychology, ecology and sociology—and, by developing supercomputing facilities and large-scale laboratories, to build a much more powerful human science on which to base future policies.

…

With funding of approximately EUR 100 million per year for ten years, the FuturIcT project aims to build on these advances to establish three systems on an unprecedented scale:

A Living Earth Visualator. A super-computing platform capable of simulating and visualizing the world at the global scale, focusing on the interaction between technical, social and economic systems as well as their physical and biological environment. This will provide a setting for the exploration of whole-Earth dynamics and policies designed to manage them.

Crisis Observatories. Laboratories running massive data mining and computing systems to detect possible crises, such as bubbles or crashes in financial or housing markets, to gain advance warning of critical shortages in, say, oil, water, or food, or to develop ways to identify risks of wars and social unrest, disease spreading, or environmental instabilities.

Knowledge Accelerator: A concept bringing together key representatives from a wide range of scientific disciplines, from businesses and other organizations, and from governments to identify important social or technological innovations early on and to devise ambitious, practical programmes to further their wide social benefit.

The anti-crisis project: Thinking our way to a better future.

http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=82283&CultureCode=en See http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=82283&CultureCode=en.

References

Buchanan, Mark (7/26/2010). Social networks: The great tipping point. New Scientist. Retrieved 8/1/2010 from http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727701.100-social-networks-the-great-tipping-point-test.html.

Newman, Fred M.(1966). Questioning the place of social science disciplines in education. Presented to National Council of Social Studies Convention, November, 1966. Retrieved 8/1/2010 from http://www.udel.edu/soe/whitson/curriculum/files/Newmann_Disciplines.pdf.

Notice the date (November, 1966) of this article. Quoting from the article:

If we are to teach the structure of a discipline, we must know what we mean by "structure" and "discipline." …

If we are to teach disciplined thought, we must be able to discriminate between disciplined and non-disciplined thought. Phenix4 proposes three general criteria for disciplined knowledge: analytic simplification (using key concepts that organize large amounts of seemingly random data), synthetic coordination (establishing patterns and relationships among variables), and dynamism (methods and attitudes that stimulate further inquiry and new questions). We might agree that disciplined social science consists of empirical inquiry aimed toward the making of more accurate predictions about human behavior. This involves creating concepts that help to simplify the perceptions of experience, observation procedures that guarantee objectivity, measurement and evaluation techniques that allow for quantitative statements, etc. Participants in the discipline share a common language; they constitute a social institution with agreed upon goals, positions of differing authority and status,procedures for training newcomers into the craft or profession.

Fred M. Newmann has had a long and distinguished career. See, for example, a summary of some of some of his ideas from a 2000 paper, available at http://nsdcff.wikispaces.com/file/view/1_K_Authentic+Intellectual+Work.+The+What+and+Why.pdf. Quoting from that document:

3: We articulated three broad criteria for authentic intellectual work:

• Construction of Knowledge: using or manipulating knowledge as in analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and evaluation, rather than only reproducing knowledge in previously stated forms. ::* Disciplined Inquiry: gaining in-depth understanding of limited topics, rather than superficial acquaintance with many, and using elaborated forms of communication to learn and to express one's conclusions.
• Value Beyond School: the production of discourse, products, and performances that have personal, aesthetic, or social significance beyond demonstration of success to a teacher.

This definition insists that high quality intellectual work be grounded in knowledge, concepts, and perspectives of academic, professional, or applied technical disciplines and that it be directed to understanding issues, problems, or questions of significance beyond classrooms and schools. Unfortunately, the term "authentic" is commonly used to refer only to the "real world" dimension, but in our view this is insufficient. If intellectual work is to be authentic, it must be based on rigorous thinking and grounded in the substantive knowledge of the disciplines in addition to being "relevant" to students' lives. Another misconception is the assumption that emphasis on authentic intellectual work entails neglect of or reduced attention to "basic" knowledge and skills. To the contrary, success in authentic intellectual work requires use of extensive knowledge and academic skills. The point is not to avoid basic knowledge and skills, but to teach the "basics" in ways that promote the production of authentic intellectual work and move beyond them to more complex intellectual challenges.

Author or Authors

This stub was created by David Moursund.