Social Science can be regarded as a contradiction in terms. This is because it is difficult to quantify, often needing a statistical approach to characteristics like Intelligence, that can be measured. Then there are other things that cannot be measured at all. One is Anthropology, which covers the study of tribal societies. This tends to be descriptive. For example Bronisław Malinowski, of the London School of Economics, studied the people of the Trobriand Islands. Whence his book Coral Gardens and Their Magic. The Wiki includes economics, political science, human geography, demography and sociology among its sciences.
Something profoundly important about society & its study was said by
Charles Murray, one author of The Bell Curve.
It
is at:-
'The Bell Curve' 20 years later A Q&A with Charles Murray
Reflecting on the legacy of “The Bell Curve,” what stands out to you?
I’m not going to try to give you a balanced answer to that question, but take it in the spirit you asked it—the thing that stands out in my own mind, even though it may not be the most important. I first expressed it in the Afterword I wrote for the softcover edition of “The Bell Curve.” It is this: The reaction to “The Bell Curve” exposed a profound corruption of the social sciences that has prevailed since the 1960s. “The Bell Curve” is a relentlessly moderate book — both in its use of evidence and in its tone — and yet it was excoriated in remarkably personal and vicious ways, sometimes by eminent academicians who knew very well they were lying. Why? Because the social sciences have been in the grip of a political orthodoxy that has had only the most tenuous connection with empirical reality, and too many social scientists think that threats to the orthodoxy should be suppressed by any means necessary. Corruption is the only word for it.
Now that I’ve said that, I’m also thinking of all the other social scientists who have come up to me over the years and told me what a wonderful book “The Bell Curve” is. But they never said it publicly. So corruption is one thing that ails the social sciences. Cowardice is another.
You might feel that this is an example of Mob Psychology. At all events it is fair comment on the infiltration of social science, politics, education etc. Antonio Gramsci, the leading intellectual of the communists party in Italy pointed the way to The Long March Through The Institutions. It succeeded. It is why we have Third World aliens flooding Western Civilization & why the Welfare State has become a way of life for millions.
Social Science ex Wiki
Social science is a major category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. It in turn has many branches, each of which is considered a "social science". The main social sciences include economics, political science, human geography, demography and sociology. In a wider sense, social science also includes some fields in the humanities[1] such as anthropology, archaeology, jurisprudence, psychology, history, and linguistics. The term is also sometimes used to refer specifically to the field of sociology, the original 'science of society', established in the 19th century.Positivist social scientists use methods resembling those of the natural sciences as tools for understanding society, and so define science in its stricter modern sense. Interpretivist social scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its broader sense. In modern academic practice, researchers are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies (for instance, by combining the quantitative and qualitative techniques). The term social research has also acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners from various disciplines share in its aims and methods.
Anthropology ex Wiki
Anthropology is the study of humanity.[1][2][3] Its main subdivisions are social anthropology and cultural anthropology,[1][2][3] which describes the workings of societies around the world, linguistic anthropology, which investigates the influence of language in social life, and biological or physical anthropology,[1][2][3] which concerns long-term development of the human organism. Archaeology, which studies past human cultures through investigation of physical evidence, is thought of as a branch of anthropology in the United States,[4] although in Europe, it is viewed as a discipline in its own right, or grouped under related disciplines such as history.
Trobriand Islands ex Wiki
The Trobriand Islands are a 450-square-kilometre (174-square-mile) archipelago of coral atolls off the east coast of New Guinea. They are part of the nation of Papua New Guinea and are in Milne Bay Province. Most of the population of 12,000 indigenous inhabitants live on the main island of Kiriwina, which is also the location of the government station, Losuia. Other major islands in the group are Kaileuna, Vakuta, and Kitava. The group is considered to be an important tropical rainforest ecoregion in need of conservation...............Drawing upon earlier work by Bronisław Malinowski, Dorothy D. Lee's scholarly writings refer to "non-lineal codifications of reality." In such a linguistic system, the concept of linear progress of time, geometric shapes, and even conventional methods of description, are lost altogether or altered. In her example of a specific indigenous yam, Lee explains that when the yam moves from a state of sprouting to ripeness to over-ripeness, the name for each object in a specific state changes entirely. This is because the description of the object at different states of development are perceived as wholly different objects. Ripeness is considered a "defining ingredient" and thus once it becomes over-ripe, it is a new object altogether. The same perception pertains to time and geometric shapes.[4]