Lesson 1.

2: Discipline and Ideas in the Social Science

 Branches in the Social Science

 Anthropology
o It is the study of ancient societies and their cultural traditions.
o It came from the Greek word anthropos meaning humankind and logos
meaning the study.
o In studying culture, anthropologists investigate the people’s language,
their values, technologies, and even how they group themselves.
o Anthropology has two broad fields, physical and cultural. Physical
Anthropology, which is also called biological anthropology, studies the
biological evolution of man; it also provides explanation on the reason
behind biological variations among contemporary human population.
Cultural Anthropology, on the other hand, investigates and seeks to
understand the cultural features of societies.
o Cultural Anthropology is further divided into three sub branches;
 Archaeology: seeks to reconstruct the past life of ancient
societies, trace the cultural changes that took place and the reason
behind the changes.
 Anthropological Linguistics: involves the study of language in
societies or communities where language may or may not be
written.
 Ethnology: study of marriage customs, kinship patterns, economic
systems, and religious rites of cultural groups, and compare it with
the way of life of contemporary societies.
 Economics
o It is the study of the efficient allocation of scarce resources in order to
satisfy unlimited human needs and wants.
o The word economics came from two Greek words, oikos meaning home
and nomos meaning management.
 o Economic resources that can be used to produce goods and services are
called Factors of Production. It is classified into four categories :
 Land: is anything that comes from nature and which gives life and
support to all living creatures.
 Labor: refers to any human effort exerted during the talent or
exercise of intellectual faculties.
 Capital: refers to anything that can be used to create or
manufacture goods and services.
 Entrepreneurship: it no traditionally consideration be a factor of
production, is now thought to be an indispensable aspect since this
is the ability to organize all the other factors of production in order
to out effectively the production process.
o Economics is classified into two scopes:
 Macroeconomics: studies the choices of individuals as consumers
and as workers. It also studies firms that produce the goods and
services, and the industries from which the firm operate.
 Microeconomics: is the study of the choices made by economic
actors such as households, companies, and individual markets.
 Geography
o It studies the interaction between the natural environment and the people
living in it. It acts as a bridge between natural science and social science
o Geography comes from two Greek words: geo meaning earth and
graphos meaning charting or mapping.
o Geography is divided two main branches: Physical and Human.
o Physical Geography studies the natural features of the earth, like
climate, water, vegetation, and soil.
o Human Geography studies human population and the impact of its
activities on the planet.
o The pioneer of the field is Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who is the head of
the Great Library at Alexandria and royal tutor to the future King Ptolemy
IV. He is also considered as the “Father of Geography.”
 Linguistics
o Came from the Latin word lingua, meaning language. This discipline
studies the nature of language through an examination of the formal
properties of natural language, grammar, and the process of language
acquisition.
o Linguistics
 History
o Is traditionally regarded as the study of the recorded past. It comes from
the Greek noun historia, meaning learning. The discipline attempts to
reconstruct the past given the available sources.
o There are two types of historical sources: Primary and Secondary.
o Primary Sources is a testimony of an eyewitness or an account of
someone who has firsthand of information on the subject.
o Secondary Sources is a testimony or an account of someone who is not
an eyewitness to the event being narrated.
o Herodotus of Halicarnassus who is a product of Greece`s Hellenic age,
was considered as the Father of History.
 Political Science
o It is the study of politics, power, and government. The word politics comes
from the Greek word politea, or a person who participates in the polis.
Engagement in the polis means taking part in its decision-making.
o It is the process of using power in the government, while power is the
means for the government to rule the people.
 Psychology
o It is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. This include
physical state and the mental state and how this all relates to the
environment of the individual. It comes from the two Greek words, psyche
meaning “soul” or “spirit,” and logos.
o The German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt is considered as the Father of
Modern Psychology. He is credited for being the first in the movement to
make psychology a science.
 o Psychology is divided into three major fields.
 Clinical Psychology – finds treatment for people with psychological
disorder.
 Developmental Psychology – studies the intellectual, social,
emotional and moral development across a lifespan.
 Experimental Psychology – studies the most basic concepts of
psychology like cognition, perception, memory, and learning but
mostly conducted on animals instead of humans.
 Sociology
o It comes from the Latin word socius meaning “friend” or “companion”.
Sociologist studies how people relate to each other and how they work as
a whole in the larger society.
o It was the French Social thinker Auguste Comte who coined the word
sociology in 1838 to encapsulate the idea of improving society by
understanding how it operates.
 Demography
o It is the study of human population. It comes from two ancient Greek
words, demos meaning “the people” and graphos maning “charting or
mapping.”
o The discipline also studies how people move from place to place the main
sources of data are census and other vital statistics.
 Fertility is the incidence of child bearing in a country`s population.
 Mortality is measured using crude death rate, or the number of
deaths for every 1000 population.