The
word "science" is older than its modern use, which
is as a short-form for "natural science". Uses of
the word "science", in contexts other than those
of the natural sciences, are historically valid, so long as
they are describing an art or organized body of knowledge
which can be taught objectively. The use of the word "science"
is not therefore always an attempt to claim that the subject
in question ought to stand on the same footing of inquiry
as a natural science.
Social and environmental factors
affecting it have made many of the so-called hard sciences
dependent on social science methodology. Examples of boundary
bluring 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.
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.
The classic brief definition
of economics, set out by Lionel Robbins in 1932, is "the
science which studies human behavior as a relation between
scarce means having alternative uses." Absent scarcity
and alternative uses, there is no economic problem. Briefer
yet is "the study of how people seek to satisfy needs
and wants" and "the study of the financial aspects
of human behaviour." |
