I am a lecturer in a
local college here in Nairobi and every time I speak to students the question
of career choice always emerges. The understanding of different disciplines is
important in evaluating personal potentials and corresponding the same to
relevant career lines. With the ever increasing rate of unemployment, it is
important to make excellent choices on one’s career paths by emphasizing on one’s
strengths and weakness as well as the passion and enthusiasm to various
disciplines. Blind choices on career path may lead to frustrations and dismal
performances by individuals especially later in the career life not to mention
the underemployment of the said person’s abilities.
There has been a lot
of confusion about the various social sciences disciplines, humanities as well
as the natural sciences. The modern world may be understood as revolving around
scientific knowledge which has been divided into two major classes’ i.e the
social sciences and the natural sciences. Unlike the traditional form of
learning which was basically ‘routine based’, the modern form of learning
involves the understanding, testing and application of concepts. The scientific
knowledge acknowledged in modern learning can therefore be summarized as either
knowledge on human culture and their products or knowledge on the natural
environment. The two major divisions of knowledge are further divided into
numerous disciplines to facilitate a better, intensive and deeper understanding
of the specific discipline.
The social sciences
may broadly be defined as the cluster of human knowledge focusing on all
aspects of the group life of the human beings. It seeks to understand human
actions and events as influenced by the social cultural context. Social sciences
may be understood as a puzzle game involving many actors who also double as the
players and playing objects. Thus social scientists seek to understand the behavior
and thinking of people in taking different decisions and the implications of
such decisions on the social arena. Why do communities rise against each other
in war? Why would teenagers rebel against their parents? Why would spouses kill
each other?
Natural sciences on
the other hand deal with the natural environment within which human beings
exist. The major focus been, the matter, motion, space, mass energy etc and
their implications. Further natural sciences also include the biological sciences
that focus on living things.
Due to my background I
would wish to shed some more light on the social sciences. I also wish to
expound on a third component related to but different from the social sciences that
is the humanities which deals with literature, art, music and philosophy. Social
sciences deals with culture and its influence on the patterns of human behavior
while humanities deals with as aspect of human culture which emphasize on
expressing spiritual and aesthetic aspect of human beings.
According to Albert Einstein
politics is more difficult than physics and bad politics can easily kill a
nation than bad physics. No field of knowledge may be understood as important
as the social sciences. This field of study sets to establish the factors
limiting peoples’ life as well as the opportunities within the societies that
are key in affecting human conditions. Social sciences focus on establishing an
understanding that will develop societies in which individuals are more
productive and live a satisfying life. Therefore it is in order to say that a
focus on natural sciences gives forth numerous products and by products such as
automobiles, sky scrapers, energy etc but a lack of an understanding of the
dynamics of the societies will lender such discoveries meaningless.
The human behavior as expressed through culture is a dynamic
and complex endeavor; an understanding of society must incorporate knowledge on
all aspects in order to give a more complete and comprehensive picture of
societies. However, social sciences is such a vast mine of knowledge that a
student may not master all the principles of social sciences. Thus the field of
study has been divided into various disciplines including psychology,
anthropology, history, social work, geography, economics, community development
and political sciences.
No comments:
Post a Comment