Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences)
is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the
relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used
to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society",
established in the 18th century. It now encompasses a wide array of additional
academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics,
geography, history, linguistics, management, communication studies,
psychology, culturology, and political science.
The majority of positivist social scientists use methods resembling those used
in the natural sciences as tools for understanding societies, and so define
science in its stricter modern sense.