Auxiliary Sciences of Social Sciences
Miscellanea / / July 04, 2021
It is understood as auxiliary sciences or auxiliary disciplines to those that, without fully devoting themselves to a specific area of study, are linked to her and give her help, since its possible applications contribute to the development of said area of study. For example: statistics, literature, mathematics.
These auxiliary disciplines can come from entirely different fields, as in the case of other sciences, or they can be disciplines whose specific objective is part of the range of interests addressed by the science to which it serves as an auxiliary.
The difference is that in the first case there is a collaboration between sciences, while the second is about disciplines created to explore specific sectors of the field of studies of a given science, acting as sub-disciplines.
Auxiliary Sciences of Social Sciences
Since the social sciences are not exact Sciences, but rather approach their objects of study from an interpretive perspective, often making use of disciplines and applications coming from other fields of study that allow them to approach their own from different perspectives or with greater accuracy and rigor. Transdisciplinarity is not uncommon in this type of
Sciences.In that sense, many of them take conceptual tools on loan without this meaning starting a new mixed discipline, although it is not uncommon for this to allow them to undertake a significant number of branches or sub-disciplines, such as the case of History, whose focus on disciplines of another nature such as the humanities, or even other sister social sciences, throws up the various Histories of Art, Law, etc.
The following are traditionally considered the social sciences: Political Science, Anthropology, Library Science, Law, Economics, Relations International, Ethnography, Ethnology, Sociology, Criminology, Political Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Education, Archeology, Demography, History, Ecology human and Geography.
List of Auxiliary Sciences of the Social Sciences
- Statistics. Many Social Sciences rely on statistical tools to support their approach to the communities human, social typologies or even clinical cases (psychology). The so-called actuarial sciences provide them with measurement tools that are important in the support of hypothesis and theories regarding man.
- Literature. Beyond the fairly obvious example of the History of Literature or the History of Art, literature has often served as a source of narratives and symbols for disciplines such as the psychoanalysis (Oedipus complex, for example) or psychology, since in their symbolic and semantic richness, the arts of writing are a useful field for conceptualization and creativity, values that are not strangers to the Social Sciences.
- Mathematics. It is enough to think of the example of graphs representing trends or proportional or statistical information to verify the usefulness that mathematics provides to the Social Sciences. This is particularly useful in economics, in which formulas and calculations are often required to express the production and consumption relations of goods.
- computing. There are few sciences that today escape the modernizing boom of the technological revolution, and therefore few that do not have more or less close ties with computing, inasmuch as facilitator of word processing tools, data management and even the use of specialized software, as in the case of Geography or Librarianship.
- Psychiatry. Many approaches to human societies (sociology) or to the human psyche (psychology) make use of diagnoses and the medical tools of psychiatry, as well as a source of a theoretical framework on which to base their own musings.
- Semiology. The science of meanings is a useful tool for many Social Sciences, such as Geography, for For example, they provide the opportunity to reflect on the way of conceiving the world and the senses associated with it. Many of these sciences require analysis of this type in their specific study methodology.
- Social comunication. The discourse of the media is a frequent object of study in many social sciences, from Psychology, Sociology, International Relations and even Linguistics. In that sense, many of the critical tools of Social Communication are useful to them.
- Philosophy. Since there is a branch of Philosophy called: Philosophy of the social sciences, it is not difficult to demonstrate the cooperation between the science of thought and the so-called "soft" sciences. This branch studies the methods and logic behind the set of these sciences whose objective is the interaction between man and society.
- Musicology. The formal study of music belongs to the field of the humanities, but its association with history is not only frequent, but productive: history is used of music as a record of certain forms of art and of man's relationship with the divine, which are illustrative of the mentality of a bygone age. That is why there are mixed disciplines such as ethnomusicology.
- Museology. The science of museum management and its internal logic is not alien to the Social Sciences, from which it takes exhibition material and historical, sociological and critical foundations with which to sustain his curatorship of the works of art. At the same time, the museum provides Social Sciences such as the Anthropology of physical material and a discursive space in which to show themselves to the public.
- Medicine. The anatomical knowledge that medicine provides is useful for the fields of Linguistics and Psychology, and is not infrequent that other social sciences look for elements with which to work the different legal systems humans.
- Administration. Since this discipline studies the methods of human organization, it is understood that it is very close to the social sciences, to which it often contributes its theories on the management of groups, their principles of effectiveness and a systemic approach of importance for Political Sciences, to name only one example.
- geology. The study of soils can be vital as a tool for archaeologists, whose main object of study It is usually buried by time in various types of soil and therefore requires some type of excavation.
- Marketing. This discipline studies the dynamics of the different existing market niches, advertising, the logic behind the consumer system; All of this is extremely useful for sociological, psychological or economic approaches to our societies, since consumption is also a way of relating to them.
- Social work. In many ways this discipline is an application of the precepts of social sciences such as anthropology, sociology and psychology, if not political science and law. It deals with promoting social change and intervening in subjects for the betterment of society as a whole.
- Town planning. This discipline undertakes the study of the planning of cities and urban environments, and in that sense provides vital keys for multiple historical, sociological, psychological and economic. In many areas, in fact, it is voted to consider it just another social science.
- Theology. The study of the forms of religion existing or not may seem far from the field of social science, but it is not. Anthropology, history and others of the group see in this discipline an important source of theoretical inputs and of texts which serve, in turn, as an object of study.
- Architecture. Like urbanism, this discipline dedicated to the art of living space construction provides many conceptual tools and perspectives novel to the social sciences who are interested in the way of life of the city man, even to archaeologists who are interested in the ruins of cities ancient.
- Modern languages. Since this discipline tries to systematize the study of translation methods from one language to another, as well as its dynamics of learning, is useful to enlarge the field of study of disciplines such as Education or Linguistics, which make learning and language their objects of study, respectively.
- vet. Similar to the case of medicine, this science provides tools for animal experimentation that are particularly useful for psychology, since many of his doctrines have been interested in behavioral experimentation with animals to establish his theories about intelligence or learning.
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