St.

Mary’s College of Marinduque

Isok 1 boac, Marinduque

Integrated Basic Education Department

S.Y. 2021-2022

Subject Understanding Culture, Quarter First Quarter Module # 1

Society & Politics
Level Grade 12 Duration 2 Weeks Day
Topic The Historical Background of the Growth of Social Sciences and Code
The Birth of Social Sciences as a Response to the Social Turmoil
of the Modern Period

I. OBJECTIVES
The students will be able to…
1. Trace the historical foundations of the growth of the social sciences.
2. Explain the origin of the different social sciences like anthropology, sociology and
political science.
3. Explore the significant personalities who contributed to the development of the social
sciences.
4. Demonstrate curiosity and openness to explore the significance of the social sciences
namely sociology, anthropology and political science to human life.

II. PRESENTATION OF CONCEPTS

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

In the development and progress of the human knowledge, the social sciences were
the last to develop after the natural sciences. And while the origin of the social sciences can
be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, their
development as separate fields of knowledge only begun in the modern period (Collins,
1994).
Before the birth of the modern social sciences in the West, the study of society, culture
and politics were based on social and political philosophy (Scott, 2006). Social and political
philosophies were based on the theological reasoning employed by the Church through the
bible which in turn the institution of authority during that time. As pre-modern social thinkers
employed their beliefs through experiences and observations, early social thinkers fit them to
the framework of the Church. Before the modern period, the growth of the social sciences
was slowed down because of the dominance of religious authority and tradition. However,
with the breakdown of the Church and its religious powers after the French Revolution, the
sciences grew steadily and rapidly to become the most widely accepted way of explaining the
world, nature and human beings.

The Unprecedented Growth of the Social Sciences

The Scientific Revolution begun with Nicolaus Copernicus, refers to the changes in thoughts
and beliefs, to changes in social and institutional organization that unfolded Europe roughly
between 1550 and 1700. It culminated with the work of Sir Isaac Newton which proposed the

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 th
universal laws of motion and mechanical model of the universe. The 17 century saw the
rapid development in the sciences. Sir Francis Bacon on the other hand established the
supremacy of reason over imagination. Hence, the discovery of gravity by Sir Isaac Newton,
the mathematization of physics and medicine paved way for the dominance of science and
mathematics in explaining the world and its meaning (Capra, 1982).

The Secularization of Learning and Education

The modern period marked the growing triumph of scientific methods over religious dogma
and theological thinking. The triumph of reason over the religious authority began with the
Reformation when Martin Luther started to attack some teachings of the Catholic Church. The
Age of Enlightenment then took place. This was largely a cultural movement emphasizing
rationalism as well as political and economic theories (Stearns, 2003). In the Age of
Enlightenment, philosophers led by Immanuel Kant challenged the use of metaphysics or
absolute truth derived from the unjustified tradition and authority.
Whereas in the Medieval Period, universities relied mainly on religious tradition and Bible to
explain the nature of the universe. The modern universities started to rely on the explanation
of science and its methods to interpret the world. This process is called rationalization.
Rationalization means that social life is more and more subjected to calculation and prediction
(Lyotard, 1984). Earlier people explain diseases through the use of divine intervention. With
the scientific discoveries which emerged during that time, people relied mostly with the
medical theories and scientific knowledge.

The Rise of Universities

Education is an important factor in the rise of the social sciences. The growth of the
universities contributed to the emergence of the sciences. Subjects dealing with the natural
world were taught in the universities. Merchants and capitalists supported universities and
institutions of learning because it became the training hub of future scientists, technocrats and
technological innovators.

The Dissolution of Feudal Social Relations

th
With the rise of commerce and trade in the 17 century, many medieval guilds or worker’s
cooperatives were dissolved and absorbed into emerging factory systems. The number of
cities or urban centers grew attracting farmers in the rural area to shift to being factory
workers. Mass migration happened creating an upsurge of the population in the cities. This
prompted the social scientists to study the effects of the dissolution of feudal social relations
on the social life of the people. The shift to modern life paved way on how the relationship of
the people with each other drastically changed. The gemeinschaft or community wherein
people have warm relations with each other passed away because of urbanization. On the
other hand, in the modern cities or gessellschaft, individualism gave way to cold and
calculated relationships.

Trade and Commerce

From Marco Polo’s travels to Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world, the travels of these
period fed the imaginations of the Europeans of vivid descriptions of places whose very

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existence they have so far been aware of. These accounts provided social scientists with the
raw data to create a universal model of social development. With the growing emergence of
trade and commerce, anthropologists began to compare the differences between the civilized
life and the supposed “savage” life of non-Western people (Lanuza & Raymundo, 2016).

The Rise of Individualism

With the intensification of commerce and trade, the barter system was replaced with
the use of the money system. The introduction of money allowed people to deal with others in
an improper manner. The growing depersonalization of life happened because of the
introduction of money. These conditions became an important focus of the social scientists.
They explained how the new economy had drastically changed human character and traits.

SOCIOLOGY

The term sociology was coined by the French philosopher Auguste Comte who is
also considered as the Father of Sociology. It is a branch of the social sciences that deals
with the study of human interactions, social groups and institutions, whole societies and the
human
worldas such. Sociology therefore is a science that studies the relationship between the
individual and the society as they develop and change in history.

Significant Personalities in Sociology

(1) Auguste Comte- He is a French philosopher and mathematician and the founding father
of sociology. He originally coined the term “sociology” but he originally used “social physics”
as a term for sociology. Social physics aims to discover the social laws that govern the
development of societies. According to him, there are three stages in the development of the
societies, namely the theological state, metaphysical state and positive stage. Comte’s
sociology is associated to positivism or the school of thought that says that science and its
method is the only valid way of knowing things.

(2) Harriet Martineau- She is an English writer and reformist and a woman scholar who is
responsible to the development of sociology. She is also considered as the “founding
mother” of sociology. In her accounts expressed in How to Observe Morals and Manners,
she noted the deep sociological insights that we now call as the ethnographic narratives.
She also wrote on political economy and was influenced by J.S. Mill, David Ricardo and
Adam Smith.

(3) Karl Marx- He introduced the materialist analysis of history which discounts religious and
metaphysical (spiritual) explanation for historical development. Before Marx, scholars
explained social change through divine intervention and the theory of “great men”.
However, Marx advocated the use of scientific methods to uncover the deep structural
tendencies that underlie great social transitions, for instance, from agricultural to modern
industrial capitalist society.

(4) Emile Durkheim- made possible the professionalization of sociology by teaching it in the
University of Bordeaux. He is responsible for defending sociology as an independent

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 discipline from psychology. He also famously argued that society pre-existed the individuals
and will continue to exist long after the individual is dead. His main contributions are in the
field of sociology of education, religion and deviance.

(5) Max Weber- He stressed the role of rationalization in the development of the society.
According to him, rationalization refers essentially to the disenchantment of the world.
As science began to replace religion, people also adopted a scientific and rational
attitude to the world. People began to refuse to believe in myths and superstitious
beliefs. With these, modern people began to believe in science than superstitions.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Anthropology is a discipline which includes everything about humans from their

biological and evolutionary past, to ways of life and traditions that they uphold (Gonzales,
2016). It originated from the social philosophy and travelogues of Western travelers. It grew
out with the encounters of social scientists to the non-Western world. According to Allan
Barnard (2004), anthropology emerged as a distinct branch of scholarship around the middle
of the nineteenth century, when public interest in human evolution took hold.

Significant Personalities in Anthropology

a. Franz Boas- He is considered as the father of modern American anthropology. He was the
first anthropologist to have rejected the biological basis of racism or racial discrimination. The
popular Western idea of social evolution or the development of societies from lower to higher
forms was also rejected by Boas. This was rejected by Boas in favor of historical
particularism. This doctrine states that each society is considered as having a unique form of
culture that cannot be subsumed under an overall definition of general culture. Kwakiutl
dancing for example, in Boas’ analysis can only be understood according to the meanings
ascribed to it by the participants rather than seeing it as a part of a general social function.

b. Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski- He is another anthropologist who contributed to the

development of modern anthropology. He was a Polish immigrant who did comprehensive
study of Trobriand Island. Based on his field study, he developed what social scientists now
call as participant observation. It is a method of social science research that requires the
anthropologists to have the ability to participate and blend with the way of life of a given group
of people.

c. Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown- He did fieldwork in 1906-1908 on the Andaman Islands

east of India and published his reports in the diffusionist style, but later shifted his theoretical
orientation. Radcliffe-Brown advocated the study of abstract principles that govern social
change. He saw individuals as mere products of social structures. This view led to the
establishment of structural-functionalist paradigm in anthropology. According to this view,
the basic unit of analysis for anthropology and the social sciences are the social structures
and the functions they perform to maintain the equilibrium of the society.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Political science is the study of political power relations, behavior and activities as
well as systems of government from a domestic, international and comparative perspective.
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 Traditionally, the study of political science focuses primarily on the state and its institutions
(Gonzales, 2016). It earliest form dates back to the ancient Greek philosophy of Socrates,
Plato and Aristotle. Later it became religious-oriented tradition beginning with St. Augustine
and later secularized by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Their works,
highlighting the social contract theory, became the foundation of modern democratic theory.

Significant Personalities in Political Science

c.Niccolo Machiavelli- He was an Italian historian, politician and philosopher. Machiavelli’s

vision when he wrote his book “The Prince” was to have a ruler capable of uniting Italy by
any means possible. Unlike any other political thinkers in his time, he developed his treatise
not through the interpretation and study of classical or Christian philosophies but by the use
of historical and contemporary information.

d.Thomas Hobbes- A British philosopher and one of the founding fathers of modern political
philosophy, argued in defense of absolute monarchies in his work The Leviathan (1651).
But instead of ascribing the ruler’s right to rule from divine right, he contended that the right
to rule must come from the people.

e.John Locke- An English philosopher known as the Father of Classical Liberalism. He argued
that the ruler’s function is to protect the rights of his/her people. According to him, society
consented on being ruled so that their rights on life, liberty and property are protected.

f. Baron de Montesquieu- He argued the decentralization of the state power in his writing The
Spirit of Laws (1748). He proposed a tripartite system of government divide into
executive, legislative and judiciary branches. Up to this day, these systems became the
basis of how governments function up to this day.

5.Voltaire- A French philosopher who sought in his writings the separation between the Church
and state. According to him, the church should not interfere with the affairs of the
government.

References:

Lanuza, Gerry M. & Raymundo, Sarah S. 2016. Understanding Culture, Society and Politics.
Manila: Rex Book Store, Inc.
Collins, Randall. 1985. Four Sociological Traditions. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Lyotard, Jean Francois. 1984. The Postmodern Condition. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press

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 ACTIVITY SHEET

Name: __________________________________ Date:_____________________________

Grade& Strand: __________________________ Teacher: __________________________

I. DIAGRAM COMPLETION (50 Points)

Directions will be discussed online.

Anthropology

Sociology Political Science

2. Matrix Completion

Directions: Choose one significant personality in each of the social sciences discussed and
explain their contributions or views in their respective social science area of
discipline.

Social Science/Personality Contribution

Sociology

Personality:

Anthropology

Personality:

Political Science

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 Personality:

ESSAY (20 Points)

Direction: Answer the question not less than 10 sentences, cite an example.

1. How would you describe the importance of the different social sciences in our daily
life?

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