Certainly such branches as anthropology, archaeology, history, and geography can be addressed with the scientific method. But studies such as economics, law, linguistics, political science, sociology, international studies, communication, and areas of psychology such as behavioral and developmental psych seem to me to still be little more than pseudo-science. Their position as university disciplines may confer upon them an aura of scientific precision they truly do not yet have. This is a follow up to my earlier question regarding Social Darwinism.

Looking at the founders of the discipline with 20–20 hindsight, it is easy to question whether these studies, important though they certainly are, deserve to co-opt the term science, which we are used to attaching to things that can be established firmly via the scientific method.

The Social Sciences got their beginning in the 19th century. The early pioneers were Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Herbert Spencer. These men were clearly brilliant philosophers, but scientists they were not. They established a regimen for Social Science which all too often prevails to this day. The argued forcefully using logic and rhetoric to support a position arrived at more by thought experiments than laboratory observations. They gave their theories the seal of science when in truth they were untested and when tested, often proved to fail.

How far have the social sciences relating to human social behavior progressed since their 19th century beginnings? Do you think they deserve to be called sciences today? If not, then what should we call them?

Topics: economics, law, political science, social studies, social sciences