Everyday life” – In Social Science, a pattern of activities of a group of people within a society and thus a good source of information

about the structures of their lives, worldview, and individual decisions and struggles.

--WHAT IS SOCIAL SCIENCES? --

- discipline which examine and explain human beings.

- understanding how minds work, to how societies as a whole function.

 Sociology- study of society, both on the individual and structural level. (class, religion and social mobility)
 Anthropology- the 'science of humanity', topics – from human behavior, to cultural relations, and how the evolution of
humanity has influenced society's structure.
 Geography- study of places and the relationships between people and their environments. Examines how human culture
interacts with the natural environment. Locations and places can have an impact on people.
 Political Science- study of politics and power from domestic, international, and comparative perspectives.
 Psychology- studying both social behavior and neurobiological processes. Child development, interpersonal relationships or
social psychology.

--WHAT IS HUMANITIES?—

- academic disciplines that study human culture.

- use methods that are primarily critical, or speculative, and have a significant historical perspective.

- include the academic disciplines of philosophy, languages and literatures, history, and the arts.

- arts include the visual arts, drama, and music.

 Philosophy- philosophy" means, "love of wisdom."

-philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world
in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other.
-Those who study philosophy are perpetually engaged in asking, answering, and arguing for their answers to life’s most basic
questions.
- As an academic discipline philosophy is much the same.
 Metaphysics- the study of the nature of reality, of what exists in the world, what it is like, and how it is ordered.
- Is there a God? What is truth? What is a person? What makes a person the same through time?
 Epistemology- study of knowledge. It is primarily concerned with what we can know about the world
- What is knowledge? Do we know anything at all? How do we know what we know?
 Ethics- concerns what we ought to do and what it would be best to do. What is good and right arise.
- What is good? What makes actions or people good? What is right?
 LANGUAGE/LINGUISTICS- a body of written works.
- Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems, including language, national origin, historical period, genre,
and subject matter.
- The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry
- prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors
- perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution.
 HISTORY- considered both a social science and humanities, uses the historical method.
- “Historical education achieves a number of goals at once: it trains the mind, enlarges the sympathies, and provides a
much-needed historical perspective on some of the most pressing problems of our time.”
– John Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 1991
 ARTS- also called fine arts, modes of expression that use skill or imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects,
environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.
WHAT IS THE INTERSECTION OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES?

1. One of the major differences between the two is that humanities involve a more critical and analytical approach whereas
social science deals with a more scientific approach.

2. Humanities are a branch of science that deal with the heritage and the question of what makes us human.

3. As there is a scientific approach to social sciences, it is considered to be a branch of study in between humanities and natural
sciences.

4. Humanities are considered to be more philosophical than social sciences.

5. The study of humanities can be traced back to ancient Greece. It was during the Roman times that the concept of seven
liberal arts developed like; rhetoric and logic, grammar, music, astronomy, arithmetic, astronomy, and geometry. There was a
great shift, however, to the study of humanities in the 15th century.

WHAT IS NATURAL SCIENCES?

- the study of natural phenomena (including cosmological, geological, physical, chemical, and biological factors of the universe).

 Physics- involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and
force.
- general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.
 Chemistry- science of matter and the changes it undergoes.
-The science of matter is also addressed by physics,
-physics takes a more general and fundamental approach,
-chemistry is more specialized, being concerned by the composition, behavior (or reaction), structure, and properties of
matter, as well as the changes it undergoes during chemical reactions.
 Biology- natural science that studies life and living organisms, including their physical structure, chemical processes,
molecular interactions, physiological mechanisms, development and evolution.

WHAT IS THE INTERSECTION OF HUMANITIES AND NATURAL SCIENCES?

- significant differences between social science and natural science lies in their area of focus.

- The social science focuses on the interactions of humans and society. Natural science, focuses on the physical world.

- difference between both branches of law is that natural science operates in a closed system. (which they use for their
research work are restrictive, and one can easily predict the outcome of the work.)

- Social science, operates in a liberal or an open system. (cannot predict its outcome because one cannot control or foretell
how the variables will turn out in the course of the research work.)

Auguste Comte - French philosopher

Positivism- believing in the natural rather than the supernatural,

- He used to relay his belief that knowledge should be obtained and interpreted using systematic, scientific and objective
methods.

Theological Stage- people viewed the world and events in that world as a direct expression of the will of various gods.

Metaphysical Stage- arises from the inability of the human mind to pass directly from theological to positive thinking.

Scientific Stage- scientific explanation based on observation, experiment, and comparison.