Talk:Outline of social science

Outlines Top‑importance

	This article is an outline, a type of article that presents a list of articles or sub-topics related to its subject in a hierarchical form. For the standardized set of outlines on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Contents/Outlines. Outlines are within the scope of WikiProject Outlines, a collaborative effort to improve outlines on Wikipedia. For guidance on building and maintaining outlines, see Wikipedia:Outlines.OutlinesWikipedia:WikiProject OutlinesTemplate:WikiProject OutlinesOutlines
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Higher education Stub‑class

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Anthropology: Oral tradition

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Quick explanation of Wikipedia outlines

"Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". There are two types of outlines: sentence outlines (like those you made in school to plan a paper), and topic outlines (like the topical synopses that professors hand out at the beginning of a college course). Outlines on Wikipedia are primarily topic outlines that serve 2 main purposes: they provide taxonomical classification of subjects showing what topics belong to a subject and how they are related to each other (via their placement in the tree structure), and as subject-based tables of contents linked to topics in the encyclopedia. The hierarchy is maintained through the use of heading levels and indented bullets. See Wikipedia:Outlines for a more in-depth explanation. The Transhumanist 00:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are problems with this article.

1. There are almost no references to sources regarding the inclusion of the disciplines listed here.

2. More importantly, I would contest the inclusion of at least a couple of disciplines:

a. Physical Geography. This is not a social science, either as how I see it, how it is grouped in universities, nor according to the definition of social science here on wikipedia. Specifically, the social sciences cover topics which have a social aspect. When we refer to history, for example, we are usually regarding *human* history. There are other kinds of history, such as the history of large cat species circa 10,000 BCE or the history of trees circa 10Mya, but these have no human social aspect and we therefore never talk about them in terms of history. We rather include them in zoology and botany or archeaology, respectively. Physical geography is about landmasses, limnology, etc, largely without human existence. The human aspect of it is handled in Human Geography, yes?
b. Philosophy. This is a big sticking point for me (for one). This is not because it definitely should not be included here qua philosophy, but rather because it's scope makes some of it fall within social science and some of it fall without. It therefore *transcends* social science, as a whole discipline, even though some of it is squarely socially oriented. For example, I would not categorize metaphysics as within social science at all. Metaphysics is concerned with the nature of reality (and whatever else you want to include in the definition as given here on wikipedia). This has very little to do with human societies and the interpersonal relationships thereof (social science) and much to do with just the nature of reality itself without regard to human societies, including the nature of the existence of the human as an individual. Yes, interpersonal relation is hit here because that is part of our questioning of how we know the reality around us, including other people, but it isn't a major portion of it. Philosophy, while usually included in the Social Science wing on a university campus, is more properly, I think, something that stands apart from social science.

69.62.141.170 (talk) 21:26, 7 October 2018 (UTC) 3. Outline formatting has problems regarding indentation. 4. Some items are duplicated, either as a sub-category of itself or repeated in some other place in the outline.[reply]

Classification of philosophy in the social sciences is absurd.

If Philosophy is classified as part of the social sciences, it is absurd. Philosophy cannot be classified as part of the social sciences and natural sciences because they are so dissimilar. Philosophy should be classified as a distinct "Essence science."—Essence science, Social Science, Natural science, Applied science,... 36.85.216.107 (talk) 06:46, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]