Is Social Science Really a Science

1. Is social science really a science? Writing

Social science may be defined (broadly) as the rational and systematic study of human society in all its forms with the aim of arriving at an enduring understanding, acknowledged as such by a broad consensus of researchers, of social phenomena. One of the properties which is necessary to a science is that the activities of its practitioners results in a substantial body of organised "knowledge". One of the qualities of what qualifies as "knowledge" is that there is a broad consensus among interested parties concerning this "knowledge". Thus if social science did not arrive at an enduring understanding of social phenomena, acknowledged as such by a broad consensus of researchers, it would fail to qualify as a science. Whether it does so will be considered later in this essay. As an initial attempt to define "science" one might say that it is the collective activity, and the enduring results of that activity, in which the aim is to describe, analyse and understand (in a way which is intelligible to any person with the necessary mental abilities and training) a particular field of empirical phenomena (its qualities, properties, nature and anything else about it which captures our attention and interest), and if possible to predict accurately the development of systems within this field from particular states or in response to particular changes.1 However, this definition would exclude mathematics from the realm of the sciences. Mathematics has been called "the queen of the sciences". Two of the qualities which justify the inclusion of mathematics among the sciences are (i) that the activity of mathematicians results in enduring knowledge and (ii) that mathematics (unlike philosophy) is not characterized by enduring disagreements among its practitioners. Mathematicians may be inclined to view a particular mathematical hypothesis either as true or as false, but it is recognized by all mathematicians that this matter can be...