Major Event and Contribution of Social Science Disciplines

Just like an identical twin, the different disciplines of social science have
similarities despite of their differences.

According to Quexbook, 2018 Anthropology traces its roots to Ancient

Greek historical and philosophical writings about human nature and the
organization of human society.

According to Quexbook, 2018 The Modern Economics, which is still being

studied today, is the result of the efforts of ancient or Pre classical (384 B.C - 1776),
classical (1776 - 1871), Neoclassical (1871 - today) and Islamic Economists.

According to Quexbook, 2018 Some of the first truly geographical studies

occurred more than four thousand years ago. The main purpose of these early
investigations was to map features and places observed as explorers travelled to
new lands. At this time, Chinese, Egyptian, and Phoenician civilizations were
beginning to explore the places and spaces within and outside their homelands.
The earliest evidence of such explorations come from the archaeological discovery
of a Babylonian clay tablet map that dates back to 2300 BC.

According to Quexbook, 2018 People with a certain word choice, syntax, and
pronunciation are revealed to be members of a particular speech community; a
group of people who share social conventions about language use. Some features
are noticeable (salient) and are recognized within the community as having a
particular social meaning. Other features are sociolinguistic indicators that can be
associated with certain social characteristics. Different speech communities may
reflect subsets of the same language called dialects.

According to Quexbook, 2018 From the late 1950s to mid-1980s, works in

the history of Political Science stand out by their sheer rarity. Earlier political
scientists were rather (though not exceptionally) more historical in their
disciplinary self - understanding.
Wilhelm Wundt opened the first experimental laboratory in Psychology at the
University of Leipzig, Germany. Credited with establishing psychology as academic
discipline, Wundt’s students include Emil Kraepelin, James McKeen Cattell, and G.
Stanley Hall.

According to Quexbook, 2018 Although sociology has its roots in the works
of philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Confucius, it is a relatively new academic
discipline. It emerged in the early nineteenth century in response to the challenges
of modernity.
According to Quexbook, 2018 The Demographic Transition Model (DTM) is
based on historical population trends of two demographic characteristics - birth
rate and death rate - to suggest that a country’s total population growth rate cycles
through stages as that country develops economically.

1
Founder of Different Disciplines

1. Anthropology: Edward Burnett Taylor (1832 - 1917)

According to Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004
 English cultural anthropologist
 First to hold the chair in the subject at Oxford University in the UK in 1896
 Coined the term “culture”
 Wrote “Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of
Civilization"

2. History: Herodotus (484 B.C - 425 B.C) According to Mark, 2018

 Greek Historian
 Treated historical subjects as a method of investigation
 Collected historical materials systematically and critically and arranged
them into a historical narrative.
 Wrote “Histories” which is the record of ancient traditions and culture of
Greece, Asia and Africa

3. Economics: Adam Smith (1723 - 1790) According to Butler, 2016

 Founder of Classical School
 Constructed an explanation on how social behavior is regulated
 Saw a world where each person sought their own self - interest but was
constrained by morality, markets and government
 Wrote “Wealth of the Nations” in 1776

4. Geography: Eratosthenes (276 B.C - 194 B.C) According to Russell, 2017

 Greek geographer
 Became chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria
 Accepted the concept that the Earth is round and calculated its
circumference to within 0.5 percent accuracy
 Described the known areas of the world and divided the earth into five
climatic regions
 Prepared the earliest maps of the known world

5. Linguistic: Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913) According to Mambrol, 2018

 Swiss linguist
 Posited that linguistic form is arbitrary and therefore that all languages
function in a similar fashion
 Published “Memoire sur le systeme primitifdes voyelles dans les langues
indo-europeenes.”
6. Political Science: Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C) According to Neonatal, 2016
 Political scientist
 Laid down the foundation of governance and leadership
 He said “man by nature is a political animal”.
 He wrote “The Politics”.

7. Psychology: Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920) According to McLeod, 2008

 German Psychologist
2
  Opened the Institute for Experimental Psychology at the University of Leipzig
in Germany in 1879
 Trained Psychology students to make observations that were biased by
personal interpretation or previous experience and used the results to
develop a theory of conscious thought
 Wrote “Principles of Physiological Psychology.”

8. Sociology: Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857) According to Lyudmila, 2000

 French sociologist
 Coined the term “sociology”
 Advocated the application of scientific method to social life and positivism.
 Wrote “Cours de Philosophie Positive” published from 1830 - 1842 in five
volumes.

Table 1: Historical Foundation of Each Discipline

Discipline Historical Foundation

 Traces its roots from natural history which is the study of plants,
Anthropology animals and humans with reference to their history and native
environment.
 The discovery and contact to new civilizations by European
explorers and colonizers led to curiosity and questions of who
these people are, who their ancestors were, how they are related
to other people in other places, what makes them distinct, what
similarities they share with the rest, how they conduct their way
of life, and what culture they have in terms of knowledge they
possess, their beliefs, technology that have, etc.
 It was in 19th century that the discipline began its formative
years as a social science.
 Through the Medieval and Renaissance periods, History was
History often studied through a sacred or religious perspective.
 In the 20th century, academic historians focused less

on epic nationalistic narratives, which often tended to glorify the

nation or great men, to more objective and complex analyses of
social and intellectual forces.
 Recently, the field of digital history has begun to address ways of
using computer technology to pose new questions to historical
data and generate digital
scholarships.

 It was not considered a separate discipline until the nineteenth

Economics century
 Greeks examined wealth accumulation and inquiries on whether
property should be in the hands of private or public institutions.
 In medieval times (Middle Ages - 5th to 15th century), scholars
argued that it was a moral obligations of business to sell goods at
a just price.
 Changes in economic thought have always accompanied changes
in the economy, just as changes in economic thought can propel
change in economic policy.

3
  People engaged in the study of geography because it satisfies
Geography their natural curiosity about foreign places and different ways of
life.
 The Ancient Greeks made the first contribution to the subject
through measuring the earth using grids of meridians.

 It was the old Babylon who first created linguistics texts called
Linguistic Sumerian.
 Hindus also created text called Vedas.
 The formal study of language began in India
 It started with the formulation of 3,959 rules of Sanskrit
morphology.
 Early interest in language in the West was a part of Philosophy,
not a grammatical description.

 It was once part of the many related fields of study like history,
Political Science philosophy, law and economics.
 The theoretical and practical study of the state and the politics
began way back to the time of the Ancient Greeks, about 500 -
300 B.C
 The chieftain who headed a village was chosen from
the ranks of leaders with the power to make laws,
judge and execute laws.
 The chiefdom become a state

Psychology  It has its roots in Ancient Greek Philosophy such as

epistemology, metaphysics, religion and oriental
philosophy.
 Over the centuries, psychology and physiology
became increasingly separated resulting to the two
conceptions of psychology that is phenomenological
(experimental) and mechanistic (physiological).

Sociology  The intellectual, scientific and industrial revolutions

which happened in Europe in the middle of the 19th
century led to the development of Sociology.
 The intellectual revolution opened new perspective in
society which offered the people new principles,
ideals, and beliefs changing their outlook in life and
the way they perceive themselves, their environment
and relations with fellow men.
 The revolutions in Europe brought rapid and radical
changes which resulted to social problems, issues
and social unrest prompting some individual to
direct their attention and investigation of social
phenomena.

4
5