THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Learning Objectives

Explain anthropological and sociological perspectives on culture, society and politics

Acquire basic knowledge about origin, growth and development of the social sciences.

Demonstrate curiosity and openness to explore the significance of the social sciences.

Recognize the Western and colonial origins of third world social sciences and knowledge
production.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE GROWTH OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Before the birth of

modern social sciences in the West, the study of society, culture and politics were based on
social and political philosophy .In return, social and political philosophies were informed by
theological reasoning grounded in Revelation based on the holy bible.
The Unprecedented Growth of Science The scientific revolution which begun with Nicolaus
Copernicus refers to historical changes in thought and belief. In Europe roughly between 1550
and 1700 with the works of Sir Isaac Newton,which prosed universal laws of motion and
mechanical model of the Universe .Sir Francis Bacon ,who established the supremacy of reason
over imagination.

Ren Descartes- Philosopher

and mathematician. the father of

modern philosophy for defining a

starting point for existence, I
think; therefore I am.
Enlightenment European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries
emphasizing reason and individualism rather than tradition. It was heavily influenced by 17th-
century philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, and Newton, and its prominent exponents
include Kant, Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith.

12. Medieval Period During the Medieval Period,universities relied mainly on religious tradition
and the bible to explain the nature of the universe and the place of human being in the grand
scheme of things, the modern universities started to rely on science and its method to interpret
the world. Max Weber ,one of the leading figures in modern sociology,described this process as
rationalization.

13. Rationalization Rationalization or rationalisation (also known as making excuses[) is a

defense mechanism in which controversial behaviors or feelings are justified and explained in a
seemingly rational or logical manner to avoid the true explanation, and are made consciously
tolerable or even admirable and superior by plausible means

14. The rise of Universities As students at a university, you are part of a great tradition.
Consider the words you use: campus, tuition, classes, courses, lectures, faculty, students,
administration, chancellor, dean, professor, sophomore, junior, senior, fees, assignments,
laboratory, dormitory, requirements, prerequisites, examinations, texts, grades, convocation,
graduation, commencement, procession, diploma, alumni association, donations, and so forth.
These are the language of the university, and they are all derived from Latin, almost unchanged
from their medieval origins. The organization of this university, its activities and its traditions, are
continuations of a barroom brawl that took place in Paris almost 800 years ago.

15. The Dissolution of Feudal Social Relations With the intensification of commerce and trade
in the 17th century ,many medieval guilds or workers cooperative were dissolved and absorbed
into the emerging factory system. The factory system and the unprecedented growth in the
urban centers due to trade and commerce,attracted a lot of agricultural workers and mass of
rural population to migrate to urban centers.

16. Trade and Commerce For many centuries the Great Silk Road connected a complex
network of trade routes from Europe with Asia. It was a way to establish contact with the great
civilizations of China, India, the Near East and Europe. Trade caravans, diplomatic missions,
merchants representatives of religious circles, dervishes, warriors millions people have
passed on this road through time with nothing frightening these brave travelers, neither the
difficult roads, nor the waterless deserts.

17. The Rise of Individualism The intensification of commerce and trade gradually replaced
barter with the production of money and banking system.Soon banking system provided
merchants and capitalists the leverage to extend credit and transactions.

18. GEORGE SIMMEL Simmel studied philosophy and history at the University of Berlin. In
1881 he received his doctorate for his thesis on Kant's philosophy of matter, a part of which was
subsequently published as "The Nature of Matter According to Kant's Physical Monadology"
19. The birth of Social Sciences as a Response to the Social Turmoil of the MODERN PERIOD
Sociology is a branch of the social sciences that deals with the scientific study of human
interactions ,social groups and institutions ,whole societies and the human world as such.Of
course Sociology also addresses the problem of the constitution of the self and the individual,
but it only does so in relation larger social structures and processes

20. Auguste Comte better known as Auguste Comte was a French philosopher. He was a
founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism. He is sometimes
regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term

21. Harriet Martineau Harriet Martineau, one of the earliest Western sociologists, was born in
1802 in Norwich, England. Martineau was a self-taught expert in political economic theory, and
wrote prolifically about the relations between politics, economics, morals, and social life
throughout her career. Her intellectual work was centered by a staunchly moral perspective that
stemmed from her Unitarian faith. She was fiercely critical of the inequality and injustice faced
by girls and women, slaves, wage slaves, and the working poor.

22. Karl Marx The philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary, Karl Marx, is
without a doubt the most influential socialist thinker to emerge in the 19th century. Although he
was largely ignored by scholars in his own lifetime, his social, economic and political ideas
gained rapid acceptance in the socialist movement after his death in 1883. Until quite recently
almost half the population of the world lived under regimes that claim to be Marxist. This very
success, however, has meant that the original ideas of Marx have often been modified and his
meanings adapted to a great variety of political circumstances. In addition, the fact that Marx
delayed publication of many of his writings meant that is been only recently that scholars had
the opportunity to appreciate Marx's intellectual stature.

23. Emile Durkleim David mile Durkheim (French: [emil dykm] or [dykajm];[1] April 15,
1858 November 15, 1917) was a French sociologist, social psychologist and philosopher. He
formally established the academic discipline and with Karl Marx and Max Weberis
commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology

24. Max Weber Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist, philosopher,
jurist, and political economist whose ideas profoundly influenced social theory and social
research.Weber is often cited, with mile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three founders
of sociology

25. Anthropology Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present. To understand the
full sweep and complexity of cultures across all of human history, anthropology draws and
builds upon knowledge from the social and biological sciences as well as the humanities and
physical sciences.

26. Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas was a German- American anthropologist and a pioneer of
modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology His work is
associated with the movement of anthropological historicism
27. Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski was a Polish anthropologist, one of the most important 20th-
century anthropologists. He has also been referred to as a sociologist and ethnographer.

28. Alfred Reginald Radcliffe -Brown was an English social anthropologist who developed the
theory of structural functionalism and coadaptation.

29. Political Science Political science is a social science discipline that deals with systems of
government, and the analysis of political activity and political behavior. It deals extensively with
the theory and practice ofpolitics which is commonly thought of as determining of the distribution
of power and resources

30. Walter Lippmann was an American writer, reporter, and political commentator famous for
being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War, coining the term "stereotype" in the
modern psychological meaning, and critiquing media and democracy in his newspaper column
and several books

31. The Colonial Origin of the Social Sciences

32. The Clamor for Decolonization of Social Sciences As discussed above,the image created
by the Social Scientists around the 18th century carried a very European view of non Western
world.Social Sciences spread from the center to the peripheries of the of the world .Most of their
observations ,mainly from anthropology were clothed in the cultural beliefs and attitudes of the
Fair European.

33. Indigenization of Social Sciences in the Philippines In the Philippines,social sciences after
World War II simply perpetuated colonial knowledge production from American social
sciences.Many Filipino social scientists such as Virgilio Enriquez,a psychologist Zeus Salazar,a
historian and Prospero Covar,an anthropologist advocated for the indigenization of social
sciences.

34. Antonio de Morga

35. Social Sciences in the Era of Globalization Science may take on completely different forms
in various cultural and historical contexts, but all of these forms of the human acquisition of
knowledge share a general nature that lies in their exploration of the potential for innovation
embodied in a given material culture. This exploration, focusing on means rather than ends,
occurs in a certain autonomy from the specific applications also given with this culture, through
its tradition and concentrating on certain goals. Against the background of such a historical
definition of science, the remarkable dual character it possesses, its durability and its fragility,
becomes more understandable

36. Knowledge is globalized when it is in principle globally available and accessible. The
globalization of knowledge today has reached a new stage: it has transformed the economy of
knowledge radically, in ways that are comparable to the transformation in recent years of a
monetary economy to a system in which local and global developments are coupled by almost
instantaneous interactions. New potentials for the globalization of knowledge have emerged,
such as the global system of science and the World Wide Web, offering immediate worldwide
access to the knowledge produced within this system. Due to the increased mobility of people
and things, research hubs and the human resources of science have become global assets.
Themigration of scientific knowledge is no longer characterized by the trajectories of individuals
or by the dynamics of fellow traveling, but rather by global social patterns

37. Feminist Anthropology that seeks to transform research findings, anthropological hiring
practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge, using insights from feminist theory.
Simultaneously, feminist anthropology challenges essentialist feminist theories developed in
Europe and America. While feminists practiced cultural anthropology since its inception (see
Margaret Mead and Hortense Powdermaker), it was not until the 1970s that feminist
anthropology was formally[citation needed] recognized as a subdiscipline of anthropology. Since
then, it has developed its own subsection of the American Anthropological Association the
Association for Feminist Anthropology and its own publication,

38. Summary The social Sciences namely, sociology, anthropology and political science,
developed as result of the development of modern society. The rise and rapid growth of the
natural sciences influenced the direction of the social sciences.