19/sms04/021
Lawal Aliyu Abdulaziz 

Philosophy  of social sciences and applied sciences 

The success recorded in natural sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth century was so enormous on the social and intellectual life of the people of Europe who started to trust the words of scientists.This positive response to science happened as a result of a change in the socio cultural milieus of the time.The socio cultural milieus in which positivism grew is called the renaissance and the enlightenment period .It is called a renaissance period because it marked a period when people started a revolution of return to the Greek heritage. 
    The word of the pope was the final authority on any matter, be it political, social or intellectual. It was a time men and women were burned at stake because the church has found them guilty of witchcraft or sorcery. However, the intellectual community at the time saw this as a big treat to human happiness and survival.So they started infiltrating literature with the benefits of using reason to arrive at justified conclusion just as Socrates used to do.In arts and music were hidden Greek worldview too .Bertrand Russell puts this more succinctly when he said that, “the period of history which is commonly called “modern” has a mental outlook which differs from that of the medieval period in many ways.Of these, two are the most important: the diminishing authority of the church, and the increasing authority of science 
   The effect of that manoeuvring was overwhelming scientific approach to things grew out of philosophical approach to issues ,but science was restricted to study of natural phenomena because it was only the material that was believed to behave in a regular and predictable way. a French social philosopher called August Comte thought otherwise.This is the beginning of social sciences, especially sociology and Comte is being regarded till date as father of  sociology and social sciences in general.
    Positivism rejects theoretical speculation that are not based on facts. The are a lot of problems with this concept of ideal knowledge seeking enterprise. These include the facts that:
1  observation are concept-laden
2  observation are hypothesis-laden 
3  observation are theory- laden 
4  observation are value-laden 
5  observation are interest- laden 

What is social sciences ?

Social sciences is an area of study dedicated on the explanation of human behavior, interaction and manifestations,either as an individual in a society or collectively as a group including the institution. Social sciences seeks to employ the method of sciences on the investigation of social phenomena taking the human person as object of study. The objectives of such endeavor include: 
	1.	Understanding human in both historical and cultural development 
	2.	Being able to predict human behaviors based on the pattern of interaction 
	3.	Influencing human behavior 
	4.	Discovering and manipulating if possible 
	5.	Advancing beyond armchair philosophy    
   
       PROBLEM OF REASONS AND CAUSES 
  
	1.	Have an invariable or constant relation in the sense that whenever the alleged cause occurs, the effect must also occur 
	2.	Be spatially contiguous 
	3.	Be temporally related 
	4.	Have an asymmetrical relation 
    

     THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PERSON AS OBJECT OF STUDY IN SOCIAL SCIENCES 

Another problem with the project of social science is that,according to max weber methodology of science becomes inapplicable due to the fact that the object of study in social science is man, a rational being with freewill, desires emotions and other sentient features that come into play in his action or reactions.