At present, natural and social sciences, which are mainly distinguished by their object of study, are integrated into different disciplines, as is the case of psychology or environmental sciences. This is mainly due to the primacy of the study methods of the natural sciences, which have been adopted by the social sciences.

However, these two sides of science are distinguished by several very significant aspects, or at least they were in the beginning. In this article we will describe the 7 main differences between the natural and social sciences ; in any case, it must be taken into account that it is not possible to generalize these statements to all scientific manifestations.

Science and its ramifications

Science is defined as the set of systematic activities that have the objective of obtaining and organizing knowledge about different types of phenomena in order to explain and predict aspects of reality. We talk about natural sciences when the object of study is natural phenomena and about social sciences if human activity is analyzed.

Physics, which is considered the basic natural science, relies heavily on mathematics; however, the latter is a formal science. Other particularly outstanding natural sciences are chemistry, geology, oceanography, astronomy, meteorology and biology, which in turn includes medicine, zoology or botany.

In contrast, among the social sciences we find disciplines such as history, economics, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, geography, education, law, demography, linguistics, political science and communication.

The borderline between social and natural sciences is very often blurred in many disciplines; a good example of this is psychology, in which a philosophical-humanistic tradition and another one closer to biology coexist. After all, the scientific method is the same regardless of whether it is applied to one or another type of phenomenon.

Differences between social and natural sciences

We will now describe 7 of the most important differences between the social and natural sciences , at least since their classical definition; in recent decades scientific progress has favoured the integration of different disciplines, thus prioritising the choice of different fields of knowledge according to the objectives of each research.

1. Object of study

While the natural sciences are concerned with physical and natural phenomena, the social sciences are concerned with human acts. Thus, economics, politics or social psychology refer to products of the activity of social groups; whereas chemistry, astronomy and the neurosciences analyse more tangible aspects of reality.

2. History and development

The birth of social sciences is usually identified with the Enlightenment , which took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but its consolidation did not take place until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. On the other hand, natural sciences are much older: human beings have studied the forces of nature since the beginning of our collective history.

3. Theoretical basis

The natural sciences rely more than the social sciences on the formal sciences, mainly mathematics, in order to structure reality in a rigorous way. In the social sciences positivism reflects a similar tendency , although the interpretative current is also relevant, which tries to give a concrete meaning to the phenomena studied.

4. Research methods

Many of the most popular research methods in science today come from the natural sciences; mathematics and the experimental method are very important in this regard. Although the social sciences have adopted these tools, they also prioritize observation, surveys or case studies because of the complexity of social fact.

5. Degree of subjectivity

The social sciences have been criticized for an alleged lack of rigor associated with the use of the scientific method for the analysis of abstract facts. In the case of the natural sciences, the degree of apparent objectivity is usually greater because they study observable and physical phenomena; however, every scientific task reduces reality to some extent .

6. Generalization capacity

Since the natural sciences seek to limit the role of subjectivity, the capacity to generalize the results of their research is greater than in the case of the social sciences, where it is often inevitable to resort to hypothetical constructs that cannot be objectively tested and where unique phenomena are analyzed.

7. The Scientist’s Perspective

Social scientists can never be completely oblivious to the phenomenon they study, since they actively participate in social reality. In contrast, from the natural sciences it is more feasible to adopt an external perspective ; thus, the neurophysiology expert who studies the nervous system does so from the outside, although his beliefs influence the research.