Polytechnic University of the Philippines

Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs

College of Education
DEPARTMENT OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

Course Title: FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Instructor: JOEY T. DANTING
Report Title: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL SCIENCES
Reporter: Mr. Joey T. Danting
Sources: http://www.yourdictionary.com/social-science
https://www.britannica.com/topic/social-science

Objectives:
1. Discuss the branches of social sciences and types of social scientist
2. Share some experiences or knowledge on current events involving
3. Explain the implications of the development of social sciences in the modern world

SOCIAL SCIENCE – is a major category of academic disciplines, concerned with the society and the relationships
among individuals within a society.
- The systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem,
the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of
hypothesis.
BRANCHES OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

 Anthropology – the study of the cultural, social, and physical development of humans
 Archeology – the study of past civilizations, with information gleaned from material remains, such as,
artifacts, buildings, graves, etc
 Communication Studies – an academic field that deals with processes of communication, commonly
defined as the sharing of symbols over distances in space and time
 Demography – the study of both quantitative and qualitative aspects of human population
 Economics – the study of the ways in which a society deals with money and the availability of goods
 Education – the study of how people gain knowledge
 Geography – the study of the Earth and the way humans are dispersed on it
 History – the study of man’s past and his decisions in order to find relationships between the events and
causes for them
 Humanities – the study about human culture, such as literature, philosophy, history, etc.
 Law – the study of the rules that society lives by and how they are formed or influenced by popular beliefs
 Linguistics – the study of the structure of language, its syntax, phonology, semantics, phonetics,
morphology, and the nature of language and its variations
 Philosophy – the study of some of the most basic questions about human life/ love of wisdom
 Political Science – the study of the processes and principles of government and other political institutions
 Psychology – the study of the mind’s functions as they relate to one’s physical and social environment
 Religion – the relationship between humans and God or Gods
 Sociology – the scientific study of social behavior and human societies
Social Studies seeks to answer and understand social issues:
1. Unemployment 8. Overpopulation
2. Drug Abuse 9. Price Increase
3. Corruption and Political Dispute 10. Sanitation and Discipline
4. Poverty and Hunger 11. Homelessness
5. Climate Change 12. Public Health
6. Crime and the likes 13. Racism and Stratification
7. Inflation and Recession 14. Accessibility to the Transport System

TWO TYPES OF SOCIAL SCIENTIST

  Positivist Social Scientists – use methods resembling those of the natural sciences as tools for
understanding society, and so define science in its modern sense
 Interpretivist Social Scientists – may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing
empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its broader sense
HISTORY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
Heritage of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

- St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae (1265/66–1273) - contained and fashioned

syntheses from ideas about humanity and society—ideas indeed that may be seen to be
political, social, economic, anthropological, and geographical in their substance. But it is partly
this close relation between medieval theology and ideas of the social sciences that accounts for
the longer time it took these ideas—by comparison with the ideas of the physical sciences—to
achieve what one would today call scientific character.
- Roman Catholic Church - while it might be important to see to it that thought on the physical
world corresponded as far as possible to what Scripture said—witnessed, for example, in the
famous questioning of Galileo—it was far more important that such correspondence exist in
matters affecting the human mind, spirit, and soul.
- Revival of the Greek Classics - the immense appeal of the Greek classics during the
Renaissance, especially those of the philosophers Plato and Aristotle. A great deal of social
thought during the Renaissance was little more than gloss or commentary on the Greek
classics. One sees this throughout the 15th and 16th centuries.
- Rene Descates - Cartesianism as his philosophy was called, declared that the proper approach
to understanding of the world, including humanity and society, was through a few simple,
fundamental ideas of reality and, then, rigorous, almost geometrical deduction of more
complex ideas and eventually of large, encompassing theories, from these simple ideas, all of
which, Descartes insisted, were the stock of common sense—the mind that is common to all
human beings at birth
- Bureaucracies - The emergence of the nation-state carried with it ever
growing bureaucracies concerned with gathering information, chiefly for taxation, census, and
trade purposes, which might have been employed in much the same way that physical
scientists employed their data
- Historical Publications - The voluminous and widely published accounts of the great voyages
that had begun in the 15th century, the records of soldiers, explorers, and missionaries who
perforce had been brought into often long and close contact with indigenous and other non-
Western peoples, provided still another great reservoir of data, all of which might have been
utilized in scientific ways as such data were to be utilized a century or two later in the social
sciences.
Heritage of the Enlightenment
- Social Philosophers - much less scientific, understanding of humanity and society. The dead
hand of the Middle Ages seemed to many vigorous minds in western Europe the principal force
to be combatted, through critical reason, enlightenment, and, where necessary, major reform
or revolution
- Ethnocentrism and Parochialism – was spreading in this period which means Europeans are
now accepting non-westernized culture/ there is a need to understand them for various
reasons such as trade and exploration
- Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679) was an English philosopher of the Age of Reason. His famous
1651 book "Leviathan" and his social contract theory, developed during the tumultuous times
around the English Civil War, established the foundation for most of Western Political
Philosophy. His vision of the world was strikingly original at the time, and is still relevant to
contemporary politics. He did not shrink from addressing sensitive issues head on, and while
few have liked his thesis, many have seen the political realism it represents.
- John Locke (1632-1704) laid much of the groundwork for the Enlightenment and made
central contributions to the development of liberalism. In his “Essay Concerning Human
Understanding,” he advanced a theory of the self as a blank page, with knowledge and identity
arising only from accumulated experience. His political theory of government by the consent
of the governed as a means to protect “life, liberty and estate” . His essays on religious
tolerance provided an early model for the separation of church and state.
 - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) was a French philosopher and writer of the Age of
Enlightenment. His Political Philosophy, particularly his formulation of social contract
theory (or Contractarianism), strongly influenced the French Revolution and the development
of Liberal, Conservative and Socialist theory. A brilliant, undisciplined and unconventional
thinker throughout his colourful life, his views on Philosophy of Education and on religion were
equally controversial but nevertheless influential.
- Adam Smith: The Father of Economics Adam Smith was an 18th-century philosopher
renowned as the father of modern economics, and a major proponent of laissez-faire economic
policies. In his first book, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," Smith proposed the idea of the
invisible hand—the tendency of free markets to regulate themselves by means of competition,
supply and demand, and self-interest. Smith is also known for his theory of compensating wage
differentials, meaning that dangerous or undesirable jobs tend to pay higher wages to attract
workers to these positions, but he is most famous for his 1776 book: "An Inquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." Read on to learn about how this Scottish
philosopher argued against mercantilism to become the father of modern free trade and the
creator of the concept now known as GDP.
Heritage of the 19th century

- Industrial and French Revolution - The effects of the two revolutions, the one
overwhelmingly democratic in thrust, the other industrial-capitalist, have been to undermine,
shake, or topple institutions that had endured for centuries, even millennia, and with them
systems of authority, status, belief, and community.
The coining or redefining of words is an excellent indication of people’s perceptions of change
in a given historical period. A large number of words taken for granted today came into being
in the period marked by the final decade or two of the 18th century and the first quarter of the
19th. Among these are: industry, industrialist, democracy, class, middle
class, ideology, intellectual, rationalism, humanitarian, atomistic, masses, commercialism, proleta
riat, collectivism, equalitarian, liberal, conservative, scientist, utilitarian, bureaucracy, capitalism,
and crisis.
- Auguste Comte – The most recognized contribution of Comte and the one that is most closely
linked to his name is the use, for the first time of the term "Sociology" in 1824. His ideas of
"social engineering" have been very important and widely discussed in the sociological field.
Comte conceived social facts as facts susceptible of scientific study and proposed a society
organized under principles based on science and rationality.
According to Comte it is the universal law of intellectual development. According to him “Each
branch of our knowledge passes through three different theoretical conditions; the theological
or fictitious; the metaphysical or abstract; and the scientific or positive.” This is known as the
law of three stages because, according to it, human thinking has undergone three separate
stages in its evolution and development.
- Max Weber - German sociologist and political economist best known for his thesis of the
“Protestant ethic,” relating Protestantism to capitalism, and for his ideas on bureaucracy.
Weber’s profound influence on sociological theory stems from his demand for objectivity in
scholarship and from his analysis of the motives behind human action.
- The positivist appeal of science was to be seen everywhere. The rise of the ideal of science in
the 17th century was noted above. The 19th century saw the virtual institutionalization of this
ideal—possibly even canonization. The great aim was that of dealing with moral values,
institutions, and all social phenomena through the same fundamental methods that could be
seen so luminously in such areas as physics and biology. Prior to the 19th century, no very
clear distinction had been made between philosophy and science, and the term philosophy was
even preferred by those working directly with physical materials, seeking laws and principles
in the fashion of Sir Isaac Newton or William Harvey—that is, by persons whom one would
now call scientists.
- Karl Marx - revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and economist. He published (with Friedrich
Engels) Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848), commonly known as The Communist
Manifesto, the most celebrated pamphlet in the history of the socialist movement. He also was
the author of the movement’s most important book, Das Kapital. These writings and others by
Marx and Engels form the basis of the body of thought and belief known as Marxism.
- Separation of Social Sciences that was mentioned earlier
20th Century
- Development of various social science political theories.