Reference no: EM132386673
SOSC A101 Social Sciences: A Foundation Course Assignment - The Open University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Question - Write an essay to answer the following question.
How do social scientists explain human behaviour? Are social scientific explanations different from scientific explanations? What difficulties have social scientists encountered in applying the scientific method to the study of people and society?
How should you interpret this question?
The whole question can be divided into the following sub-questions:
- What is social scientific explanation?
- What are the major components of the methods used by social scientists in explaining human behaviour?
- What is scientific explanation? How is it different from social scientific explanation?
- What difficulties have social scientists encountered in applying the scientific method to the study of people and society?
References -
Williams, M (2002) Science and Social Science: An Introduction, London; New York: Routledge, Chapter 2 'Science and its method' and Chapter 3 'Social science as science'.
Dye, T R (2014) Power and Society: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 14th edn, Chapter 2 'Social sciences and the scientific method'.