What is the difference between social science and natural science?
Experimentation, observation, and subject.In very (VERY!) broad terms (at least describing a critical challenge in social sciences):Natural science tends to be based on repeatable experimentation based on repeatable observation of natural phenomenon.Social science tends to be based on non-repeatable experimentation and the process of observing very often interrupts the social interactions attempting to be observed. And the subject is the human animal in society.As a practitioner of business and advertising (which are applied social sciences), I grow less convinced of how much we know the longer I work in the fields. Humanity is quite complex and any time simple answers are given I am skeptical.And, now, let the critiquing of this coarse over-simplification begin. I firmly believe there is critical truth buried herein. But also do not believe it will withstand every criticism.And you know what…that makes it like a social sciences finding - lacking solidity.
What is the purpose of defining behavioral categories in observational research?
As guidelines, not rules, for well-known tendencies(correlation, not causality). Because we are observing a species(humans) many of its particulars share common attributes that lead us in a direction of normal tendency in normal situations. The behavioral categories defined can help us more quickly diagnosis a likely area where we know a given solution to a behavior.
What is the difference between arts, humanities and social sciences?
"Humanities" is NOT a catchall term for everything that isn't sciences. The NEH defines the humanities as follows:"What are the humanities?'The term 'humanities' includes, but is not limited to, the study and interpretation of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.'--National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, 1965, as amended"So the Humanities are distinct from the Arts and Quantitative Social Sciences. Humanities includes art history and criticism, but if you are painting a picture or dancing, you are in the realm of arts, not humanities. If you are doing a survey to be put into a statistical database, it might be a Science-Humanities hybrid exercise, but once you start crunching the numbers, you are doing Social Science.These are man-made distinctions to help us categorize and organize, but we shouldn't be afraid of when things overlap. There is always gray area. The best example is literature. What if someone writes a novel that involves sociological history, theory, and analysis? Literature is a humanity, but people often think of authors as "artists."The easiest way to think about it is if it has "science" as part of the name, there's a bunch of math and scientific method, therefore not humanities or arts. If there's a bunch of non-verbal communication, and maybe a performance element, it's arts, and you know what the arts are, right? If it sounds like a school subject with a lot of reading and papers, but not a lot of math, it's probably a humanity.
How is anthropology different from other social sciences?
Anthropology is a relatively young academic discipline, arising within the last 150 years. As such, the subject area must be defined anew in each generation—in relation to the other social sciences, anthropology needs to be a bit scrappier, is a bit more anti-institutional. In general, although other social sciences tend to study and in the end normalize the relationship between the state and citizen (think economists and economic policy, political science analyzing politics, historians providing national histories), anthropology tends to be much more questioning of the established order. This changed a bit with anthropology’s fixation on “culture” and cultural boundaries, which was the ticket to institutionalizing the discipline. However, anthropology still in general draws its inspiration from outside the academy. For my most recent attempt to describe “What is Anthropology?” see: What is Anthropology? Conditions & Potentials of Human Life