Differences Between History And Social Sciences

Essay 1-1 Before this assignment I had not really thought much about what the differences between history and social sciences, such as political science, anthropology, and sociology, might be. After giving it some thought, I came to notice some of the differences, but I did struggle because the majority of my history classes focused on the United States while briefly touching on the history of the world. As stated in the lecture, both history and social sciences examine the past, but while they have some things in common they are also different for a few reasons. What is studied in these topics differs in how they explain the past events and how well they can explain or predict current and future events. History focuses on the past and how the events of …show more content…
In my opinion, social sciences help to fill in the unanswered questions about why an event in history might have occurred. Anthropology studies different societies/cultures and how they have developed over time, sociology studies human society, and political science studies governments; all of these require studying the past, but they also focus on different branches of history. These studies also include the “little things” that affected societies that were not necessarily included in a history class. Social sciences can also be studied presently because they focus more on human interactions, whereas history is more difficult to study in the present, as it is difficult for courses and books to keep up with everything today; the present seems especially chaotic at this point in time. Also we do not know the outcomes and effects of current events on the world, though we can reason about the human motivations and reasoning for the current events. In addition to being able to study the present easier, social sciences can also allow us to make prediction about future societal interactions, while history