ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

History of the social sciences

Okay kiddo, let's start from the beginning. Social sciences are a bunch of different subjects that study how people think, feel and behave in groups.

A long time ago, people didn't really study this kind of stuff. They just assumed that the way things were, were the way they were supposed to be. But over time, some smart people started to think differently. They wanted to understand why people do the things they do, and how society works.

The first social science that started to develop was probably philosophy. People like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle asked big questions about what it means to be human and how society should be organized. They talked about things like justice, morality and the meaning of life.

After philosophy, people started to look at society in more practical ways. In the 18th and 19th centuries, people like Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim started to study society scientifically. They tried to figure out how society worked by looking at things like economics and social structures. They asked questions like, "Why are some people rich and others poor?" and "How does religion shape society?"

At the same time, people were starting to think about how psychology and biology contribute to social behavior. This led to the development of subjects like psychology, anthropology, and sociology. These subjects study how people think, feel, and behave in groups.

Over time, social science has continued to change and evolve. Today, there are many different social science subjects that focus on everything from politics to gender studies. Social science has helped us understand why society works the way it does and how we can make it better. So that's the history of social sciences, in a nutshell!