Humanities is the oldest discipline. In a sense, the earliest knowledge of human beings is humanities. The ancients called all kinds of human knowledge "wisdom" or "philosophy", which is actually the study of humanities.
Social science is a science that takes human society as the research object. It usually includes economics, sociology, politics, law and so on. The formation of social science is much later than that of natural science and humanities. From the specific time point of view, the disciplines in social sciences, such as economics, sociology and political science, which make empirical research on society by empirical methods, began to be independent in the middle and late18th century, and gradually established their own systematic theoretical structure in the19th century. The emergence of social science is the product of the great social change, industrialization and urbanization in Europe and the rise and rapid development of western natural science and technology changes in modern times. ?
Their differences are mainly manifested in two aspects:
First, the research objects are different. The humanities study people's thoughts, spirits, emotions and values, which is the spiritual world of "people" and its accumulated culture. The value of humanities is not to provide material wealth or practical technology, but to provide a meaningful world for human beings, protect a spiritual home, and make human hearts settle down and return to their homes. Social science studies "society". If the humanities studies people's subjective world and people's spiritual culture, then the center of social science is the objective human society, which is external to specific individuals. Economics, political science, law, sociology and other social sciences. Study human society from different angles. They study economy, politics, law and society in different categories or as a whole, and make in-depth research on the structure, function, mechanism, change and motivation of human society. The purpose is to acquire systematic knowledge and theories about the operation and development of human society, so that human beings can manage society better and more efficiently.
The second is the difference in research methods. The research method of humanities is mainly the method of meaning analysis, which is an explanatory method, while the social science introduces more natural science methods and empirical methods. ?
In the mainstream of social humanities research published by UNESCO, there are 1 1 disciplines: sociology, political science, psychology, economics, demography, linguistics, anthropology, history, art and art, law and philosophy. It is considered that the first five disciplines belong to social sciences and the last six belong to humanities.
This shows that there is indeed an inseparable internal relationship between humanities and social sciences. For example, history is a subject with both humanities and social sciences. From the research object, history undoubtedly belongs to social science, but from the research theme and research method, history belongs to humanities.