What is Social Science?

Think about this morning. You woke up in a house built from materials brought from many places. Your breakfast was grown by a farmer, then processed, transported, bought and sold by many other people before it reached your plate. You came to school on a road that someone planned and someone repairs. The light in your room comes from a power station far away.

"So what?" So even your most ordinary day depends on government (who builds the road), the economy (who grows, carries and sells the food), people working together, and the natural environment. Nothing in it happens by itself.

Social Science (samajik vigyan) is the systematic study of human society (samaj). "Systematic" means careful and step by step, not guesswork. It tells you what happened and where things are. But above all it asks why: why things happen, how people live together, how the environment shapes life, how governments and economies work, and how the past and the present together shape the world.

Physics, Chemistry and Biology study the natural world. Social Science studies people: their societies, institutions, cultures, and how they deal with each other.

Now look further than your own street. The book asks questions like these:

• Why do some people live in crowded cities and others in scattered villages?
• Why do some regions farm, while others depend on industry or trade?
• Why are some places more likely to flood?
• How does a government make a decision that affects millions of people?

These things do not happen by chance. Society is shaped by history, geography, institutions, resources and human choices. Social Science looks for the answers through careful observation, evidence and logical reasoning.

Society also changes. Early humans depended directly on nature. Slowly, people learnt to grow crops, keep animals, build settlements, make tools, exchange goods and organise governments. Villages grew into towns, and towns into cities.

"Did people in India study society long ago too?" Yes. India's early thinkers valued discussion, questioning and reasoning. Three examples from the book:

• The Pañchamahābhūtas, the five great elements: earth (Pṛithvī), water (Āpaḥ), fire (Agni), air (Vāyu) and space (Ākāśha). The idea sees nature as one connected system that human life is part of, and it helps explain how the environment shapes where people settle, their work, their houses, food and health.
• Vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam: "the world is one family". Societies everywhere are connected.
• The Arthaśhāstra, attributed to Kauṭilya, about 2,300 years ago. It looked at running a state, managing the economy, taxes, and what rulers owe their people.

So careful thinking about government and the economy existed long before modern school subjects. Modern Social Science carries on the same work with new tools.

"How does a social scientist actually find things out?" They:

• observe people's lives;
• interview people and run surveys (asking many people the same questions);
• examine documents;
• compare different times and places.

Then they build an explanation that is supported by evidence, not just an opinion.