History of the social

sciences

The history of the social sciences has

origin in the common stock of Western
philosophy and shares various precursors,
but began most intentionally in the early
19th century with the positivist philosophy
of science. Since the mid-20th century, the
term "social science" has come to refer
more generally, not just to sociology, but
to all those disciplines which analyse
society and culture; from anthropology to
linguistics to media studies.

The idea that society may be studied in a

standardized and objective manner, with
scholarly rules and methodology, is
comparatively recent. While there is
evidence of early sociology in medieval
Islam, and while philosophers such as
Confucius had long since theorised on
topics such as social roles, the scientific
analysis of "Man" is peculiar to the
intellectual break away from the Age of
Enlightenment and toward the discourses
of Modernity. Social sciences came forth
from the moral philosophy of the time and
was influenced by the Age of Revolutions,
such as the Industrial revolution and the
French revolution.[1] The beginnings of the
social sciences in the 18th century are
reflected in the grand encyclopedia of
Diderot, with articles from Rousseau and
other pioneers.

Around the start of the 20th century,

Enlightenment philosophy was challenged
in various quarters. After the use of
classical theories since the end of the
scientific revolution, various fields
substituted mathematics studies for
experimental studies and examining
equations to build a theoretical structure.
The development of social science
subfields became very quantitative in
methodology. Conversely, the
interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary
nature of scientific inquiry into human
behavior and social and environmental
factors affecting it made many of the
natural sciences interested in some
aspects of social science methodology.[2]
Examples of boundary blurring include
emerging disciplines like social studies of
medicine, sociobiology, neuropsychology,
bioeconomics and the history and
sociology of science. Increasingly,
quantitative and qualitative methods are
being integrated in the study of human
action and its implications and
consequences. In the first half of the 20th
century, statistics became a free-standing
discipline of applied mathematics.
Statistical methods were used confidently.

In the contemporary period, there

continues to be little movement toward
consensus on what methodology might have
the power and refinement to connect a
proposed "grand theory" with the various
midrange theories that, with considerable
success, continue to provide usable
frameworks for massive, growing data
banks. See consilience.
Timeframes
Antiquity

Plato's Republic is an influential treatise

on political philosophy and the just life.

Aristotle published several works on

social organization, such as his Politics,
and Constitution of the Athenians.

Islamic developments

Significant contributions to the social

sciences were made in Medieval Islamic
civilization. Al-Biruni (973–1048) wrote
detailed comparative studies on the
anthropology of peoples, religions and
cultures in the Middle East,
Mediterranean and South Asia.[3] Biruni
has also been praised by several scholars
for his Islamic anthropology.[4]

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) worked in areas

of demography,[5] historiography,[6] the
philosophy of history,[7] sociology,[5][7] and
economics. He is best known for his
Muqaddimah.

Modern period

Early modern
Near the Renaissance, which began around
the 14th century, Buridanus and Oresmius
wrote on money. In the 15th century St.
Atonine of Florence wrote of a
comprehensive economic process. In the
16th century Leonard de Leys (Lessius),
Juan de Lego, and particularly Luis Molina
wrote on economic topics. These writers
focused on explaining property as
something for "public good".[8]

Representative figures of the 17th century

include David Hartley, Hugo Grotius,
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Samuel
von Putendorf. Thomas Hobbes argued that
deductive reasoning from axioms created
a scientific framework, and hence his
Leviathan was a scientific description of a
political commonwealth. In the 18th
century, social science was called moral
philosophy, as contrasted from natural
philosophy and mathematics, and included
the study of natural theology, natural
ethics, natural jurisprudence, and policy
("police"), which included economics and
finance ("revenue"). Pure philosophy, logic,
literature, and history were outside these
two categories. Adam Smith was a
professor of moral philosophy, and he was
taught by Francis Hutcheson. Figures of the
time included François Quesnay,
Rousseau, Giambattista Vico, William
Godwin, Gabriel Bonnet de Mably, and
Andre Morellet. The Encyclopédie of the
time contained various works on the social
sciences.[8]

Late modern

This unity of science as descriptive

remains, for example, in the time of
Thomas Hobbes who argued that deductive
reasoning from axioms created a scientific
framework, and hence his Leviathan was a
scientific description of a political
commonwealth. What would happen within
decades of his work was a revolution in
what constituted "science", particularly the
work of Isaac Newton in physics. Newton,
by revolutionizing what was then called
"natural philosophy", changed the basic
framework by which individuals understood
what was "scientific".

While he was merely the archetype of an

accelerating trend, the important
distinction is that for Newton, the
mathematical flowed from a presumed
reality independent of the observer, and
working by its own rules. For philosophers
of the same period, mathematical
expression of philosophical ideals was
taken to be symbolic of natural human
relationships as well: the same laws
moved physical and spiritual reality. For
examples see Blaise Pascal, Gottfried
Leibniz and Johannes Kepler, each of whom
took mathematical examples as models
for human behavior directly. In Pascal's
case, the famous wager; for Leibniz, the
invention of binary computation; and for
Kepler, the intervention of angels to guide
the planets (citation needed).

In the realm of other disciplines, this

created a pressure to express ideas in the
form of mathematical relationships. Such
relationships, called "Laws" after the
usage of the time (see philosophy of
science) became the model which other
disciplines would emulate.

19th century

The term "social science" first appeared in

the 1824 book An Inquiry into the
Principles of the Distribution of Wealth
Most Conducive to Human Happiness;
applied to the Newly Proposed System of
Voluntary Equality of Wealth by William
Thompson (1775–1833). Auguste Comte
(1797–1857) argued that ideas pass
through three rising stages, theological,
philosophical and scientific. He defined
the difference as the first being rooted in
assumption, the second in critical thinking,
and the third in positive observation. This
framework, still rejected by many,
encapsulates the thinking which was to
push economic study from being a
descriptive to a mathematically based
discipline. Karl Marx was one of the first
writers to claim that his methods of
research represented a scientific view of
history in this model. With the late 19th
century, attempts to apply equations to
statements about human behavior became
increasingly common. Among the first were
the "Laws" of philology, which attempted to
map the change over time of sounds in a
language.
Sociology was established by Comte in
1838.[9] He had earlier used the term
"social physics", but that had subsequently
been appropriated by others, most notably
the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet.
Comte endeavoured to unify history,
psychology and economics through the
scientific understanding of the social
realm. Writing shortly after the malaise of
the French Revolution, he proposed that
social ills could be remedied through
sociological positivism, an
epistemological approach outlined in The
Course in Positive Philosophy [1830–1842]
and A General View of Positivism (1844).
Comte believed a positivist stage would
mark the final era, after conjectural
theological and metaphysical phases, in
the progression of human
understanding.[10]

It was with the work of Charles Darwin that

the descriptive version of social theory
received another shock. Biology had,
seemingly, resisted mathematical study,
and yet the theory of natural selection and
the implied idea of genetic inheritance—
later found to have been enunciated by
Gregor Mendel, seemed to point in the
direction of a scientific biology based, like
physics and chemistry, on mathematical
relationships. The first thinkers to attempt
to combine inquiry of the type they saw in
Darwin with exploration of human
relationships, which, evolutionary theory
implied, would be based on selective
forces, were Freud in Austria and William
James in the United States. Freud's theory
of the functioning of the mind, and James'
work on experimental psychology would
have enormous impact on those that
followed. Freud, in particular, created a
framework which would appeal not only to
those studying psychology, but artists and
writers as well.

Though Comte is generally regarded as the

"Father of Sociology",[10] the discipline was
formally established by another French
thinker, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who
developed positivism in greater detail.
Durkheim set up the first European
department of sociology at the University
of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his Rules
of the Sociological Method. In 1896, he
established the journal L'Année
Sociologique. Durkheim's seminal
monograph, Suicide (1897), a case study of
suicide rates among Catholic and
Protestant populations, distinguished
sociological analysis from psychology or
philosophy. It also marked a major
contribution to the concept of structural
functionalism.[11]
Today, Durkheim, Marx and Max Weber are
typically cited as the three principal
architects of social science in the science
of society sense of the term.[12] "Social
science", however, has since become an
umbrella term to describe all those
disciplines, outside of physical science
and art, which analyse human societies.

20th century

In the first half of the 20th century,

statistics became a free-standing
discipline of applied mathematics.
Statistical methods were used confidently,
for example in an increasingly statistical
view of biology.

The first thinkers to attempt to combine

inquiry of the type they saw in Darwin with
exploration of human relationships, which,
evolutionary theory implied, would be
based on selective forces, were Freud in
Austria and William James in the United
States. Freud's theory of the functioning of
the mind, and James' work on experimental
psychology would have enormous impact
on those that followed. Freud, in
particular, created a framework which
would appeal not only to those studying
psychology, but artists and writers as well.
One of the most persuasive advocates for
the view of scientific treatment of
philosophy would be John Dewey (1859–
1952). He began, as Marx did, in an
attempt to weld Hegelian idealism and
logic to experimental science, for example
in his Psychology of 1887. However, he
abandoned Hegelian constructs.
Influenced by both Charles Sanders Peirce
and William James, he joined the
movement in America called pragmatism.
He then formulated his basic doctrine,
enunciated in essays such as "The
Influence of Darwin on Philosophy" (1910).
This idea, based on his theory of how
organisms respond, states that there are
three phases to the process of inquiry:

1. Problematic Situation, where the

typical response is inadequate.
2. Isolation of Data or subject matter.
3. Reflective, which is tested
empirically.

With the rise of the idea of quantitative

measurement in the physical sciences, for
example Lord Rutherford's famous maxim
that any knowledge that one cannot
measure numerically "is a poor sort of
knowledge", the stage was set for the
conception of the humanities as being
precursors to "social science."

This change was not, and is not, without its

detractors, both inside of academia and
outside. The range of critiques begin from
those who believe that the physical
sciences are qualitatively different from
social sciences, through those who do not
believe in statistical science of any kind,
through those who disagree with the
methodology and kinds of conclusion of
social science, to those who believe the
entire framework of scientificizing these
disciplines is mostly from a desire for
prestige.
In 1924, prominent social scientists
established the Pi Gamma Mu honor
society for the social sciences. Among its
key objectives were to promote
interdisciplinary cooperation and develop
an integrated theory of human personality
and organization. Toward these ends, a
journal for interdisciplinary scholarship in
the various social sciences and
lectureship grants were established.

Interwar period

Theodore Porter argued in The Rise of

Statistical Thinking that the effort to
provide a synthetic social science is a
matter of both administration and
discovery combined, and that the rise of
social science was, therefore, marked by
both pragmatic needs as much as by
theoretical purity. An example of this is
the rise of the concept of Intelligence
Quotient, or IQ. It is unclear precisely what
is being measured by IQ, but the
measurement is useful in that it predicts
success in various endeavors.

The rise of industrialism had created a

series of social, economic, and political
problems, particularly in managing supply
and demand in their political economy, the
management of resources for military and
developmental use, the creation of mass
education systems to train individuals in
symbolic reasoning and problems in
managing the effects of industrialization
itself. The perceived senselessness of the
"Great War" as it was then called, of 1914–
18, now called World War I, based in what
were perceived to be "emotional" and
"irrational" decisions, provided an
immediate impetus for a form of decision
making that was more "scientific" and
easier to manage. Simply put, to manage
the new multi-national enterprises, private
and governmental, required more data.
More data required a means of reducing it
to information upon which to make
decisions. Numbers and charts could be
interpreted more quickly and moved more
efficiently than long texts. Conversely, the
interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary
nature of scientific inquiry into human
behavior and social and environmental
factors affecting it have made many of the
so-called hard sciences dependent on
social science methodology. Examples of
boundary blurring include emerging
disciplines like social studies of medicine,
neuropsychology, bioeconomics and the
history and sociology of science.
Increasingly, quantitative and qualitative
methods are being integrated in the study
of human action and its implications and
consequences.

In the 1930s this new model of managing

decision making became cemented with
the New Deal in the US, and in Europe with
the increasing need to manage industrial
production and governmental affairs.
Institutions such as The New School for
Social Research, International Institute of
Social History, and departments of "social
research" at prestigious universities were
meant to fill the growing demand for
individuals who could quantify human
interactions and produce models for
decision making on this basis.
Coupled with this pragmatic need was the
belief that the clarity and simplicity of
mathematical expression avoided
systematic errors of holistic thinking and
logic rooted in traditional argument. This
trend, part of the larger movement known
as modernism provided the rhetorical edge
for the expansion of social sciences.

Contemporary developments

There continues to be little movement

toward consensus on what methodology
might have the power and refinement to
connect a proposed "grand theory" with the
various midrange theories which, with
considerable success, continue to provide
usable frameworks for massive, growing
data banks (see consilience).[13]

See also
Historiography, on academic historians
History of geography
History of sociology
History of statistics

References
1. Adam Kuper and Jessica Kuper, The
Social Science Encyclopedia (1985)
2. Vessuri, Hebe. (2000). "Ethical
Challenges for the Social Sciences on
the Threshold of the 21st Century".
Current Sociology 50, no. 1 (January):
135–150. [1] , Social Science Ethics: A
Bibliography, Sharon Stoerger MLS,
MBA
3. J. T. Walbridge (1998). "Explaining
Away the Greek Gods in Islam",
Journal of the History of Ideas 59 (3),
p. 389–403.
4. "Islamic Anthropology" and the
"Anthropology of Islam",
Anthropological Quarterly 68 (3),
Anthropological Analysis and Islamic
Texts, p. 185–193.
5. H. Mowlana (2001). "Information in
the Arab World", Cooperation South
Journal 1.
6. Salahuddin Ahmed (1999). A
Dictionary of Muslim Names. C. Hurst
& Co. Publishers. ISBN 1-85065-356-9.
7. Dr. S. W. Akhtar (1997). "The Islamic
Concept of Knowledge", Al-Tawhid: A
Quarterly Journal of Islamic Thought
& Culture 12 (3).
8. Schumpeter JA. (1954). History of
economic analysis . pp. 70–142.
Retrieved 2009-04-21.
9. A Dictionary of Sociology, Article:
Comte, Auguste
10. Dictionary of the Social Sciences,
Article: Comte, Auguste
11. Gianfranco Poggi (2000). Durkheim.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chapter 1.
12. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/w
eber/ "Max Weber". Stanford
Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
 13. Clifford Geertz, "Empowering
Aristotle", Science, vol. 293, July 6,
2001, p. 53. Archived May 31, 2011, at
the Wayback Machine

Further reading
Backhouse, Roger E., and Philippe
Fontaine, eds. A historiography of the
modern social sciences (Cambridge
University Press, 2014) excerpt
Lipset, Seymour M. ed. Politics and the
Social Sciences (1969)

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