Differences Between the Natural and Social Sciences

Despite their differences, the natural and social sciences both lie at the core of many modern universities, and both social science education and natural science education remain essential. Understanding the different foci, concepts, methodologies, and institutional setups of each of these fields of inquiry can help you become a more rounded scholar, and maybe even find ways to work with researchers on the other side of the fence.

Natural vs. Social Worlds
The fundamental difference between the natural and social sciences is what they study: the natural sciences seek to understand the natural world, while the social sciences seek to understand the human world. The natural sciences thus focus on investigating the laws governing observable natural phenomena, while the social sciences focus on investigating the drivers of collective human behavior. Most of the other differences between these broad fields of systematic study derive from this difference in their primary focus.

Constancy vs. Interactivity
Both the natural and social sciences use empirical evidence to make generalizable claims about their object of study. However, natural phenomena and social phenomena behave differently.

When studying natural phenomena, natural scientists can generally assume that their findings will remain constant until challenged by the work of other scientists; outside of questions of highly advanced physics, the basic functions of gravity and cell functions do not generally change on a whim. As a result, the natural sciences can easily build on previous work, and natural scientific understanding remains generally stable (albeit subject to reinterpretation).

In contrast, when studying social phenomena, social scientists cannot assume their findings remain constant because humans react to being studied in a way that most natural phenomena do not (again, excepting some fields of advanced physics). When the social sciences hypothesize about human behavior, those same humans can learn about their behavior and change it in direct reaction to research. As Ian Hacking argued in The Social Construction of What?, social phenomena do not have the same “sense of inevitability” as natural phenomena, and the labels and laws that social scientists develop can become outdated as human behavior changes and develops. As a result, the social sciences often have a less clear progression towards “truth” than the natural sciences, and their analysis has to build in assumptions about the mutability of social dynamics.

Objectivity versus Subjectivity
Perhaps the most obvious difference between the social and natural sciences is the question of objectivity and subjectivity. Objectivity is prized in the natural sciences, in large part because natural phenomena are best understood by researchers who are striving to be objective and not be swayed by personal feelings or ideas not backed up by data. Furthermore, the entirety of many natural phenomena can be empirically observed, which lends itself well to objectivity. This concern often manifests in natural science writing, where many fields prefer to emphasize the distance between the author and research.

Most social scientists also prize objectivity for the same reasons natural scientists do. However, the fully objective study of human behavior is not possible for two reasons. The first is that social scientists are a part of the things they study, and they can never fully separate themselves from it like natural sciences can. To deal with this, social scientists either strive to distance themselves as much as possible by emulating quantitative methods from the natural sciences or by fully acknowledging, reflecting on, and accounting for their biases in their work. The second is that many forms of social phenomena cannot be observed, as they can only be found in the heads of humans or in intangible ideas. As a result, social scientists often have to rely on human testimony to understand their object of study, which will always introduce the question of subjectivity.

Methodological Differences
The primary methods in the natural sciences are based around controlled experiments meant to isolate possible explanations, as well as the observation of natural phenomena. The natural sciences thus emphasize the use of statistics in their analysis of both experiments and observations to both ensure objectivity and to ensure that their conclusions are, in fact, correct and (hopefully) immutable.

The social sciences have directly adopted many methods from the natural sciences, most notably the extensive use of statistics. However, many social phenomena cannot be accurately described using statistical methods, and so social scientists have developed methods that are somewhat subjective, including ethnography, case studies, interviews, participant observation, textual analysis, and comparative/historical analysis. Though these methods do involve subjectivity, they are still systematic and seek to identify patterns in phenomena that cannot be fully understood using purely objective methods.

Despite their differences, the social and natural sciences borrow methods from each other. On the one hand, some social scientists make use of “natural experiments” to study rare social phenomena by identifying historical cases of a type of phenomenon that differ in only a few ways to try and understand their mechanisms. Furthermore, data science and machine learning methods are being used to analyze human behavior on massive scales. On the other hand, social network analysis was first developed by sociologists in the 1970s, but it has since been adopted by many natural scientists in the fields of biology, physics, and computer science.

Institutional Differences
In addition to methodological differences, the natural and social sciences also differ in terms of the institutional structures that support them. One of the most apparent differences is that, apart from economics, the social sciences tend to receive less funding than the natural sciences. As a result, more social scientists are self-funded or rely on smaller university grants than natural scientists, who have access to a wider variety of larger grants. However, natural science research is often substantially more expensive; this means that it is actually easier for social scientists to work independently of a laboratory or research center, while access to laboratory equipment or institutional support is essential for most natural science research.

This difference in funding structures also results in differences in the training of academics in each of these fields of inquiry. For graduate students in the natural sciences, finding a principal investigator to work with and gaining entry to a lab is one of the most important parts of their career, as this will determine what projects the student can work on. Many natural science PhD students are also funded by their lab or principal investigator, and natural science research is generally organized around the lab.

In contrast, social science graduate students more frequently make use of university-provided stipends, and while selecting an advisor is very important, it does not have the same career-defining importance as in the natural sciences. This is because funding for these students does not always depend on their advisor and because social science research is often independent.

Collaboration vs. Independence
The last major difference between the natural and social sciences is in the structure of their knowledge. Both strive to build on previous work, but the natural sciences often have a more linear progression, while the social sciences are messier, with disagreements over the mechanisms of the same social phenomenon spawning entirely new subfields and associated methodologies.

Furthermore, the higher expenses incurred by the natural sciences, as well as its organization around the laboratory, have encouraged a high degree of collaboration in the natural sciences; a single-author paper is almost unheard of. In contrast, in the social sciences, research tends to be more independent, and one- or two-author papers are the norm. In an article on knowledge landscapes, Klaus Jaffe found that knowledge in the natural sciences takes the form of centralized knowledge clusters that all researchers draw on, while in the social sciences, knowledge is divided into smaller, distinct clusters constantly competing with each other.

Despite their differences, which can sometimes impede understanding and collaboration, both the social and natural sciences are trying to systematically understand the world around them, and they can learn a great deal from each other.