Diss q1m3

What’s In
Political Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Sociology and

Demography are some of the branches of Social Sciences which intersect
with each other in order to understand and create a better society. These
branches or disciplines have its own focus in their respective fields.
Political Science focuses on “who gets what, when, and how”.

Linguistics focuses on different ways in communication between people in
the society, which can be verbal or non-verbal. Psychology, on the other
hand, focuses on the behavior and mental processes of individuals.
Sociology focuses on the study of human social life, groups and societies.
While Demography is a branch of Sociology, that studies human behavior
by analyzing statistical information.
What’s New
LESSON1 ANTHROPOLOGY, ECONOMICS,

GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
When did the idea of Social Science start?
The history of social sciences has the origin in the common stock of
Western philosophy and shares various precursors, but begun mostly
intentionally in the early 19th century with the positivist philosophy of science.
This philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the
foundation, methods and implications of science while positivism is a
philosophical theory stating that certain (positive) knowledge is based on
natural phenomena and their properties and relations.
However, knowing when the idea of social science began and how
the idea of social science was developed will take us further than the 19 th
century.
Historical Context of the Emergence of each Discipline
Let’s read and take note.

Anthropology
Anthropology, is the study of all aspects of human life and culture. It
examines such topics as how people live, what they think, what they
produce and how they interact with their environments. Anthropologists
try to understand the full range of human diversity as well as what people
share in common.
What is the historical foundation of Anthropology?

Anthropology traces its roots to ancient Greek historical and
philosophical writings about human nature and organization of human
society. Anthropologists ask basic questions such as: When, where and
how did humans evolve? How do people adapt to their new environments?
How did societies develop and change from the ancient past to the
present? Answers to these questions can help us understand what it
means to be human. They can also help us learn ways to meet the
present-day needs of people all over the world and plan how we might live
in the future.
Fields of Anthropology:
 Cultural Anthropology
 Linguistic Anthropology
 Archaeology
 Physical Anthropology
The European Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries

marked the rise of scientific and rational philosophical thought.
Enlightenment thinkers, such as Scottish-born David Hume, John Locke of
England and Jeanne Jacques Rousseau of France, wrote a number of
humanistic works of the nature of humankind. They based their work on
philosophical reason rather than religious authority and asked important
anthropological questions. Rousseau, for instance, wrote on moral
qualities of “primitive” societies and about human inequality. But most
writers of the enlightenment period also lacked first-hand experience with
non-Western culture.
ECONOMICS
Economics was first conceived as the study of the allocation of
resources within household levels. Its origin can be traced back to two
ancient Greek words: oikos (house) and nomos (custom or law), referring to
the rules implemented in the household to ensure its efficient
management. In the 19th century the discipline was recognized as “political
economy”, in reference to its slant towards an analysis of systematic
exchanges that include production rate, labor relations and commodity
consumption. It was only during the turn of the century that the word
political dropped
and the term economy was used to refer to the discipline that studies the
interaction of economic agents and the systems in which they perform
their transaction.
Economic thought goes as far back as the ancient Greeks and is
known to have been an important topic in the ancient Middle East.
However, today, Scottish thinker Adam Smith is widely credited for
creating the field of economics. He was inspired by French writers who
shared his hatred of mercantilism. The development of modern
nationalism during the 16th century shifted attention to the problem of
increasing the wealth and power of various nation-states. The dominant
economic practice during that time was mercantilism, which allowed strict
government regulation of trade within its territories.
Mercantilists valued gold and silver as an index of national power.
Without the gold and silver mines in the New world from which Spain drew
riches, a nation could accumulate these precious metals only by selling
more merchandize to foreigners that it bought from them. This favorable
balance of trade necessarily compelled foreigners to cover their deficit by
shipping gold and silver. Mercantilists took for granted that their own
country was either at war with its neighbors, recovering from a recent
conflict or getting ready to plunge into a new war.
GEOGRAPHY
Geography is defined as the study of the physical feature of the
earth, its atmosphere and of human activity as it affects and is affected by
these, including the distribution of populations and resources, land use
and industries. The word geography (earth description) was adopted in 200
B.C. by the Greek scholar Eratosthenes. It has the following branches such
as:
•Physical Geography – The scientific study of the natural features of the

Earth’s surface, especially in its current aspects, including land
formation, climate, currents and distribution of flora and fauna. This
includes the following fields: geomorphology, climatology,
biogeography, soil geography/soil management,
hydrography, oceanography and cartography.
•Cultural Geography – is the study of many cultural aspects found

throughout the world and how they relate to the spaces and places
where they originate and then travel as people continually move across
various areas. This is sometimes called human geography. Cultural
Geography includes the following fields: economic geography, natural
resources, manufacturing industries, marketing studies and political
geography.
•Military geography – is a sub-field of geography that is used by the

military, as well as academics and politicians, to understand the
geopolitical sphere through the military lens. It provides military leaders
with information about areas in which they may need to operate. The
many other fields of military geography includes ethnography, historical
geography, urban geography, demography and linguistic geography.
In order for us to understand the geography of past
times and how geography has played an important role in
the evolution of people, their ideas, places and
environments, we have to develop a mental map of our
community, province, territory or country and the world so
that we can understand the “where” of places and events.
Earlier geography was concerned with exploring unknown
areas and with describing the observable feature of
different places. Ancient people such as Chinese, Egyptians
and Phoenicians made long journeys and recorded their
observation of strange lands. One of the first known maps
was made of clay tablet in Babylonia about 2300 B.C. By
1400 B.C., the shores of the Mediterranean Sea had been
explored and charted. During the next thousand years,
early explorers visit Britain and navigated most of the
African coast. The Ancient Greeks, on the other hand, gave
the Western world its first important knowledge relating to
the form, size and general feature of
Earth.
HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

History, in its broad sense, is the totality of all past
events, although a more realistic definition would limit it to
the known past while Historiography is the study of the
methods of historians in developing history as an academic
discipline and by extension, is a body of historical work on a
particular subject. It is also the written record of what is
known of human lives and societies in the past and how
historians have attempted to understand it.
Historians have looked more and more to social
science – sociology, psychology, anthropology and
economics – for new methods and forms of explanation; the
sophisticated use of quantitative data has become the
accepted approach to economic and demographic studies.
At the same time, during the influence of Marxist theory,
many scholars have sharpened interest to the theoretical
foundation of historical knowledge and are reconsidering
the relation between imaginative literature and history,
with the possibility emerging that history may after all be
the literary art that works upon scholarly material.

Diss q1m3

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Diss q1m3

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Diss q1m3

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What’s In

Political Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Sociology and

Political Science focuses on “who gets what, when, and how”.

LESSON1 ANTHROPOLOGY, ECONOMICS,

When did the idea of Social Science start?

Let’s read and take note.

What is the historical foundation of Anthropology?

The European Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries

•Physical Geography – The scientific study of the natural features of the

•Cultural Geography – is the study of many cultural aspects found

•Military geography – is a sub-field of geography that is used by the

HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

You might also like

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.