It is understood as auxiliary sciences or auxiliary disciplines to those that, without fully addressing a specific area of study, are linked to it and provide assistance, since their possible applications contribute to the development of said area of study. For example: statistics, literature, mathematics.
These auxiliary disciplines may come from entirely different fields, as in the case of other sciences, or they may be disciplines whose specific aim is part of the range of interests addressed by the science it serves as an auxiliary.
The difference is that in the first case there is a collaboration between sciences, while in the second it deals with disciplines created to explore specific sectors of the field of study of a given science, serving as sub-disciplines.
Auxiliary Sciences of Social Sciences
Since the social sciences are not exact sciences, but rather approach their objects of study from an interpretative perspective, they often make use of disciplines and applications from other fields of study that allow them to approach their own from different perspectives or with greater accuracy and rigor. Transdisciplinarity is not rare in this type of science.
In this sense, many of them take conceptual tools on loan without this meaning starting a new mixed discipline, although it is also not uncommon for this to allow them to undertake a significant number of branches or sub-disciplines, as is the case of History, whose approach in disciplines of another nature such as the humanities, or even as other sister social sciences, it throws up the various Histories of Art, Law, etc.
The following are traditionally considered as the social sciences: Political Science, Anthropology, Library Science, Law, Economics, International Relations, Ethnography, Ethnology, Sociology, Criminology, Political Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Education, Archaeology, Demography, History, Human Ecology and Geography.
List of Auxiliary Sciences of the Social Sciences
- Statistics. Numerous Social Sciences are based on statistical tools to support their approach to human communities, social typologies or even clinical cases (psychology). The so-called actuarial sciences provide them with measurement tools that are important in supporting hypotheses and theories regarding man.
- Literature. Beyond the fairly obvious example of the History of Literature or the History of Art, literature has often served as a source of narratives and symbols for disciplines such as psychoanalysis (Oedipus complex, for example) or psychology, since In its symbolic and semantic richness, the arts of writing are a useful field for conceptualization and creativity, values that are not alien to the Social Sciences.
- Math. It is enough to think of the example of graphs representing trends or proportional or statistical information to verify the utility that mathematics provides to the Social Sciences. This is particularly useful in Economics, where formulas and calculations are often required to express the relations of production and consumption of goods.
- computing. There are few sciences that today escape the modernizing boom of the technological revolution, and therefore few that do not have more or less close ties with computing, as a facilitator of word processing tools, data management, and even use of specialized software, as in the case of Geography or Library Science.
- Psychiatry. Numerous approaches to human societies (sociology) or the human psyche (psychology) make use of the diagnoses and medical tools of psychiatry, even as a source of a theoretical framework on which to base their own lucubrations.
- Semiology. The science of meanings is a useful tool for many Social Sciences, such as Geography, for example, which provide the opportunity to reflect on the way of conceiving the world and the meanings associated with it. Many of these sciences require analysis of this type in their specific study methodology.
- Social comunication. The discourse of the media is a frequent object of study in numerous social sciences, from Psychology, Sociology, International Relations and even Linguistics. In that sense, many of the critical tools of Social Communication are useful to them.
- Philosophy. Since there is a branch of Philosophy called: Philosophy of the social sciences, it is not difficult to demonstrate the cooperation between the science of thought and the so-called “soft” sciences. This branch studies the methods and logic behind the set of these sciences whose objective is the interaction between man and society.
- Musicology. The formal study of music belongs to the field of the humanities, but its association with History is not only frequent, but productive: the history of music is used as a record of certain forms of art and of man’s relationship with the divine, which are illustrative of the mentality of a bygone age. For this reason there are mixed disciplines such as ethnomusicology.
- museology. The science of running museums and their internal logic is also not alien to the Social Sciences, from which it takes exhibition material and historical, sociological and critical foundations with which to support its curatorship of works of art. At the same time, the museum provides Social Sciences such as the Anthropology of physical material and a discursive space in which to present themselves to the public.
- Medicine. The anatomical knowledge that medicine provides is useful for the fields of Linguistics and Psychology, and it is not infrequent that other social sciences look for elements with which to work with the different human systems.
- Administration. Since this discipline studies the methods of human organization, it is understood that it is very close to the Social Sciences, to which it often contributes its theories on the conduct of groups, its principles of effectiveness and a systemic approach of importance for Political Sciences. , to cite just one example.
- geology. The study of soils can be a vital tool for archaeologists, whose main object of study is often buried by time in various types of soil and therefore requires some type of excavation.
- Marketing. This discipline studies the dynamics of the different existing market niches, advertising, the logic behind the consumption system; all extremely useful for sociological, psychological or economic approaches to our societies, since consumption is also a way of relating to them.
- Social work. In many ways this discipline is an application of the precepts of social sciences such as anthropology, sociology and psychology, if not political science and law. It deals with promoting social change and intervening in subjects for the improvement of society as a whole.
- Town planning. This discipline undertakes the study of the planning of cities and urban environments, and in this sense provides vital keys for multiple historical, sociological, psychological and economic approaches. In many areas, in fact, it is voted to consider it just another social science.
- Theology. The study of existing forms of religion or not may seem far from the field of social sciences, but it is not. Anthropology, history and others of the group see in this discipline an important source of theoretical inputs and texts that serve, in turn, as an object of study.
- Architecture. Like urbanism, this discipline devoted to the art of building habitable space provides many conceptual tools and novel perspectives to the social sciences who are interested in the way of life of the city man, including archaeologists who are interested in the ruins of ancient cities.
- Modern languages. Given that this discipline attempts to systematize the study of translation methods from one language to another, as well as its learning dynamics, it is useful to broaden the field of study of disciplines such as Education or Linguistics, which make learning and language their objects of study, respectively.
- Vet. In a similar way to the case of medicine, this science provides tools for animal experimentation that are particularly useful for psychology, since many of its doctrines have been interested in behavioral experimentation with animals to establish their theories about intelligence or learning. .
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