There is no single science of society or science of humanity. Instead, there are several branches of learning that deal with the origins and activities of human groups. The size of such groups ranges from the family, tribe, and nation up to the relationships between nations. These subjects are called social sciences, and they include anthropology, economics, political science, sociology, social psychology, social geography, international relations, and comparative law. History is sometimes included as a social science. Since the early years of the 20th century, in the schools of the United States some of these subjects have been blended into a single course called social studies. The purpose of social studies is to provide a comprehensive survey of the whole range of human life in all periods of history and all parts of the world. In 1916 a committee of the National Education Association published a report on the status of social science teaching in the high schools. The report urged that a course of instruction be created that would be interdisciplinary—it would combine material from several social sciences, instead of teaching the courses separately. This course, called social studies, would have as its main goal the cultivation of good citizens. The development of such a course was part of the Progressive Education movement inspired by John Dewey and others. The reason for the emphasis on citizenship is directly related to the national and world conditions at the time. First of all, a significant part of the American population in 1916 consisted of immigrants from Europe. Educators were given the task of providing the kind of schooling that could teach English and citizenship to the large numbers of Irish, Italians, Germans, Poles, Czechs, and other nationalities. The belief that the United States was becoming an ethnic “melting pot” was prevalent. Secondly, World War I was raging in Europe. Europe's ethnic rivalries were reflected in the loyalties of the first- and second-generation immigrants. Social studies courses were viewed as a means of developing patriotism among the new foreign-born citizens and citizens-to-be. In today's schools the interdisciplinary social studies courses persist, but they are not the single source of schooling in the social sciences. There are courses in history, economics, sociology, political science, and other social sciences. These cover single subjects at a depth that a general social studies course cannot duplicate. But social studies maintain their function by relating these courses to one another. Thus, for example, what is taught in an American history course provides a background for both American literature and the workings of the federal government. The Social SciencesThere is no consensus on which subjects belong among the social sciences. Historians, for instance, usually consider their subject to be one of the humanities, along with literature, language, philosophy, and the arts. It is probably best to consider history as standing somewhere between the humanities and the social sciences. Since 1950 the term behavioral sciences has come into prominence in the colleges and universities. It refers to such subjects as psychology, sociology, social psychology, and social or cultural anthropology. The benefit of bringing these subjects together under the umbrella term behavioral sciences has been to draw them closer to the natural sciences. Sometimes behavioral science and social science are used as equivalents, but many scholars insist on distinguishing between them. The Social Sciences Captive to PhilosophyThe subject matter of the social sciences was carefully studied long before the sciences themselves were named. The naming did not happen until the 19th century. Before then, the courses that are today studied as political science, law, ethics, psychology, or economics all fell within the province of philosophy. The classical Greek philosophers—especially Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—believed that anything humans could experience or think about was worth investigating. Aristotle claimed that all human beings, by nature, desire to know. Among the things people wanted to know were why people acted the way they do and where human institutions came from and how they functioned. Without the insistence by the Greeks on thinking rationally about all subject matter, there might have been no social sciences today. But because those early scholars were philosophers, what they taught remained part of philosophy for many centuries. As the thought of the ancient world was dominated by philosophy, so the thought of the Middle Ages was permeated by Christian theology. Although the physical sciences began to come out from under the umbrella of philosophy late in the Middle Ages, the subject matter of the social sciences was kept within the confines of philosophy and theology. The chief reason for this was that the subject matter of the social sciences—human behavior—was related to the content of theology and thus came under the jurisdiction of the church. The rebirth of learning, or Renaissance, which appeared at the end of the Middle Ages, was no more favorable to an independent development of the social sciences. Renaissance scholars were devoted to the ancient Greek and Latin texts, especially the works of Plato and Aristotle. Much Renaissance writing therefore consisted of little more than commentaries on ancient writers, and little new ground was broken until the 17th century. Even then, however, the dominance of philosophy was assured by the immense influence of such figures as René Descartes in France; Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke in England; and Immanuel Kant and his successors in Germany. Discourse about human nature and human institutions (government, the arts, religion, and economy) was mainly presided over by philosophers. To say that philosophers tended to monopolize theoretical discussion about what are today the social sciences does not in any way minimize the enormous contributions made by these men. Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others wrote brilliantly about the functions of government (political science) and the nature of society (sociology). Locke, Hume, George Berkeley, and Kant tried to clarify how the mind works (psychology). Adam Smith, the “moral philosopher,” wrote the first great treatise on economics, ‘The Wealth of Nations'. The period during which these men and their associates worked is called the Enlightenment. The theme for this era can be taken from a line by the poet Alexander Pope: “The proper study of mankind is man” (see Enlightenment). One chief goal of the period was to cast off the shackles of the Middle Ages, with its rigid religious demands, and to seek instead to learn what makes humanity and human society function. Without the authority of kings and popes, how would people organize their societies, what governments would they have, what religion would they create, what kind of schools would they operate? These and other questions preoccupied philosophers of the 17th to 19th century. As the philosophers were writing, the world was changing. The winds of change blew with nearly hurricane force over Western civilization from the late 18th century onward: the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution were but three of the dynamic changes that altered the way societies worked. The old monarchies of Europe began to crumble, although their collapse was postponed until the 20th century. Democratic governments began emerging in North and South America. France, after a false start, grew more democratic, and England slowly followed suit. For the first time, a vast labor class appeared in new industrial centers. The world population itself was increasing markedly. It surpassed 1 billion for the first time in the early 1800s. The growth of cities changed the landscape of Europe and made inroads in the United States. Along with the Industrial Revolution came a rapidly changing technology and the factory system. Social ties that had held for centuries in a mainly rural setting were suddenly being torn apart. A new urban poor, broken families, child labor, individual alienation—qualities of life so familiar to the 20th century—appeared for the first time on a large scale. Independence of the Social SciencesThe dynamism of social change after 1776 served to liberate the social sciences from the embrace of the philosophers. Significant as the social changes were, however, they alone probably would not have accounted for the development of separate social sciences. An equally powerful impetus came from another direction: the independent growth of the physical sciences and the powerful influence they had on all ideas of the time. By the 19th century the contrast between the physical sciences and philosophy had become decisive. If the natural world could be subject to precise scientific investigation and measurement, why should not human society also become of focus of equally valid scientific study? This question was answered by the French philosopher Auguste Comte. In his ‘Course of Positive Philosophy' (1830-42) he stated the need for a “science of man,” and he coined the word sociology to name it (see Comte). It was Comte's intention that there be one science of society to take its place alongside the various physical sciences. This view was shared by other 19th-century writers on society—Jeremy Bentham, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill. They were convinced that just as society was one thing, the study of it must be one subject. Their aim was not achieved. By the end of the 19th century the study of society had split into several specialties, just as the physical sciences were doing. This specialization was probably inevitable. First of all, the mass of subject matter was huge, covering all aspects of human behavior and organization. Secondly, the practitioners of the social sciences were mainly university professors. Specialization began in the German universities, and it was promoted by the introduction of the elective system and by the desire for separate fields of study. This approach moved quickly to the United States, where the German influence on the universities was very strong. By the early 20th century today's social sciences had become separate fields, and in some cases departments, in the universities and colleges. Economics was the first social science to set itself off from the rest. Although the word “economics” was used in the 1790s, the subject was generally called political economy until late in the 19th century. The first major writer was Adam Smith, the founder of classical economics. In his ‘The Wealth of Nations' (1776) he assumed that the creation and distribution of wealth, if left alone, operated by their own built-in mechanisms. The classical economists included David Ricardo (‘Principles of Political Economy and Taxation', 1817), John Stuart Mill (‘Principles of Political Economy', 1848), and Alfred Marshall (‘Principles of Economics', 1890). Carl Menger of Vienna founded the neoclassical Austrian school with his ‘Principles of Economics', 1871. Of the nonclassical writers, Karl Marx is the best known and most influential. Political science has roots dating back at least to Plato (‘Republic') and Aristotle (‘Politics') in the 4th century BC. The Roman senator Cicero wrote often about political affairs. In the Renaissance no more famous book was published than ‘The Prince' (1513), by Niccolò Machiavelli. Hugo Grotius published ‘On the Law of War and Peace' in 1625. Throughout the Enlightenment numerous writers explored the nature of the state and the functions of government. Among them were Francis Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Political science did not come into its own as a subject until the American and French revolutions had begun reshaping Western society. Political science was given its distinctive character by Comte and Henri de Saint-Simon in France. Another Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, published his ‘Democracy in America' in 1835–40, one of the most farsighted political works ever written. In the United States the men who framed the Constitution composed significant works on government. Most notable is the series of essays called the Federalist Papers (see Federalist Papers). What is now the Institute for Political Studies was founded at the University of Paris in 1871. A school of political science was founded at Columbia University in New York in 1880. Cultural anthropology can be said, without exaggeration, to be a product of the European discovery of the New World. The new peoples encountered, quickly and mistakenly named Indians, aroused the curiosity of European scholars. This curiosity broadened during the 19th century to include native peoples in Africa, Oceania, and Asia. Anthropology, which means literally “science of man,” concerned itself primarily with primitive, or preliterate, societies. The field soon divided itself into two parts: physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology is concerned with the comparative study of human societies. It is especially interested in the nonbiological learned behavior that creates cultures. Leading 19th-century ethnologists, or writers of descriptive cultural studies, were E.B. Tylor (‘Primitive Culture', 1871), John Lubbock (‘The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man', 1870), Lewis Henry Morgan (‘Ancient Society', 1877), and Adolf Bastian (‘The People of Eastern Asia', 1866–71). James Frazer (‘The Golden Bough', 1907–15), although a 20th-century scholar, was also one of the pioneers in the field. Sociology, when the term was coined by Comte, meant for him a comprehensive science of humanity. He and writers who shared his views took all of civilization as their subject. Other sociologists of the 19th century were more interested in the immediate social problems they witnessed growing around them—poverty, squalor, broken families, child labor, and other by-products of the factory system. These sociologists saw the same problems about which Socialists and Communists were complaining, but they approached solutions from a different angle. The sociologists were not necessarily revolutionaries, as was Friedrich Engels, author of ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844' (1845). In France a mining engineer named Frédéric Le Play published ‘European Workers' in 1855 and ‘Social Reform in France' in 1864. He also developed a method of statistical sampling that proved useful to later sociologists. In volume two of ‘Democracy in America' (1840), Alexis de Tocqueville gave an extended account of the manners, customs, and social institutions of Americans. Other scholars who helped form the subject of sociology were Émile Durkheim (‘The Rules of Sociological Method', 1895), Ferdinand Tönnies (‘Community and Society', 1887), Georg Simmel (‘Sociology', 1908), Max Weber (‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism', 1904–5), Vilfredo Pareto (‘Mind and Society', 1916), Herbert Spencer (‘The Principles of Sociology', 1876–96), Lester F. Ward (‘Applied Sociology', 1906), and William Graham Sumner (‘The Science of Society', 1927–28, posthumously). Sociology has several subfields, including criminology and demography (see Criminology). Social psychology is the study of individual thought and motivation in group situations. It seeks to learn the social basis of personality, how judgments and attitudes are formed, and what the processes of psychosocial interaction are. The subject did not get a name until about 1908, but it was an object of interest during the whole 19th century. From the time of Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th and early 19th centuries until the 1920s, writers on the subject were seeking to formulate single theories that would account for human behavior. Bentham, for example, suggested that all human motives could be reduced to a desire to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Gustave Le Bon, in his ‘The Psychology of Peoples' (1898), developed the concept that emotion, not intelligence, is the dominant force in social evolution. James Mark Baldwin believed that the process of early socialization occurred by imitation and suggestion, not by rational decision making. In 1908 the British-born American psychologist William McDougall published ‘An Introduction to Social Psychology', finally giving a name to the field and generating a new interest in it. Based on Darwin's theory of evolution, McDougall's book sought to explain how people became moral and cooperative members of society instead of being continually at odds. He assumed that people are shaped “by a variety of impulses whose nature has been determined through long ages of evolutionary process.” By the 1920s the attempt to find a single theory of human behavior was rejected. Today's social psychology began emerging between 1925 and 1945 through the use of new research techniques and experimental methods. These included sociometry, audience reaction measurement, the use of role players as social stimuli, and attitude assessment. As the subject developed, one of its chief concerns became group dynamics—how large organizations such as armies function. Social psychology also studies smaller groups, including families, committees, and factory or office workers. The field has found several useful applications in social work, industrial relations, worker training programs, and consumer attitudes. Social geography is also called human geography. Whereas physical geography is an Earth science concerned with places, social geography is concerned with the people in the places. The subject seeks to answer two questions: How and why do social characteristics vary from place to place? and How do people adapt to a particular environment? Studies of behavior in relation to the environment are very old. Herodotus, the Greek historian of the 5th century BC, wrote vivid descriptions of the peoples of the Persian Empire. A few centuries later Strabo wrote his ‘Geography', an account of the peoples and countries of ancient Greece and Rome in the 1st century AD. In the 14th century the Muslim writer Ibn Battutah produced his ‘Travels', a narrative of journeys in which he covered more than 75,000 miles (120,600 kilometers). He described the inhabitants of the Middle East, Central Asia, China, the Indian subcontinent, Africa, Spain, and various islands. The stories brought by Marco Polo from China to Italy gave Europeans fascinating insights into China in the late 13th century. An Enlightenment forerunner of social geography was the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. In his ‘New Science' (1725) he described human societies as passing through stages of growth and decline. He believed that all societies went through the same stages but at different times. The local geography was partially responsible for variations in development. The two leading social geographers of the 19th century were Friedrich Ratzel in Germany and Paul Vidal de la Blache in France. Both of them denied that human development was completely controlled by the environment. Ratzel coined the expression “living space” (Lebensraum in German) by which human groups are related to the place in which they live and flourish. His principal books on social geography were ‘Human Geography' (2 volumes, 1882, 1891) and ‘Political Geography' (1897). Vidal de la Blache believed that people were able to change their environment to some extent in order to prosper. He emphasized the interrelationships between the environment and human populations and how they modify each other. His ‘Outline of the Geography of France' appeared in 1903. In the United States, George Perkins Marsh advanced similar arguments in his ‘Man and Nature, or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action' (1864). International relations is a 20th-century subject, though foreign policy has been carried out between countries for many centuries. The need for it became apparent with the breakdown of international order in World War I. During the 1920s colleges and universities began offering courses in international relations. The courses dealt with diplomatic history, foreign policy, international law and the problem of war, peace movements, and the potential for world government under the League of Nations. World War II provided even more impetus for study in this field, partly as a way to train foreign service personnel. One of the best postwar theorists was Hans Morgenthau, author of ‘Politics Among Nations' (1948). Comparative law was not unknown in the ancient world. Aristotle collected and compared the constitutions of 158 city-states in order to devise a model constitution. The Byzantine Empire's Code of Justinian drew on legal sources from all parts and periods of the Roman Empire, though the Romans themselves had little interest in comparative codes. But the subject was recognized as a branch of legal science in the 19th century, by which time the nations of Europe had generally finished codifying their bodies of law. Codes of law (such as the Napoleonic Code in Europe and English common law) became the foundation of legal education. Scholars began comparing legal systems of various nations with each other. Legal journals were founded in Germany (1829) and France (1834) to promote the study of foreign law. A course in comparative law was founded at the Collège de France in 1831. The University of Paris had a similar course by 1846. The Society of Comparative Legislation was founded in 1869 in Paris, and a similar organization in London followed in 1898. The first international Congress of Comparative Law met in Paris in 1900. After World War I the European schools began turning their attention to studying the legal systems of the United States and what was then the Soviet Union. |