Philosophy of Social Science

Philosophy of Social Science essay example

To your pretty few many years that social science has existed as a field in itself , professionals have debated the intricacies on the practise .The philosophy of social science is to understand human behaviour in society . It is to use known sciences to explain the methods in which human beings act in groups and as societies . Exactly where scientific methods have been efficiently used to explain the phenomenon of other naturally occurring events in our world such as weather , chemical reactions and seasonal cycles on the entire world , these ways and these exact same criteria for analysis are greatly changed when applied to evaluate the human response Social science is the attempt to follow this path of scientific methodology to isolate the components of human behaviour individually and in groups in to realize how it works . Like the science that explains weather , predictions can then be created based on the info collected , analysed and formed into recognized patterns.

Where science aims to collect facts in to quantitatively determine outcome of particular circumstances , social science can also be far a smaller amount exact in its results . even in areas of research like medical anthropology social scientists are forced to commit guesswork following easy biological studies are exhausted (Johnson and Sargent 1996 .Where science uses consistent info to identify effects , social science relies much more heavily on the consensus of its researchers and analysers Any these kinds of science that is certainly according to the agreement of its participants will inevitably be faced with some things of disagreement . From the other sciences , you will find methodologies that deal with these kinds of disagreements inside a way that will cause either the acceptance or dismissal of the alternate view . This can be component from the scientific analysis of each aspect of that science . In social science disagreements are always irresolvable using methodology.

The reason for this is simple : social scientists and researchers have to rely on educated guesswork for a good deal of their conclusive studies A excellent example of the discrepancies of social science can also be discovered with the look for on the Austrian Ice Man : known to his researchers as "Otzi , the Ice Man was observed during the Alps and dated towards the Bronze Age He carried quite a few odd artifacts with him and right after his discovery by 2 wayward hikers researchers were faced on the career of interpreting these ancient tools with no the assist of a written account . Specifically , a pointed tube-like structure had researchers stumped for some time , and it was eventually observed that the piece contained a sharper needle inside the and was probably utilized for fine-tuning hunting blades . The misinformation in this case was only observed after the Ice Man 's tool was interpreted : for many years , anthropologists were finding the inner needles of these tools following the outer wooden casing had decomposed , and they have been catalogued merely as needles without any idea as to their principal function (Fowler 2001) Misinterpretations of this type are devastating on the scientific...