# Social sciences explained

All the social sciences are a "soft science" because the [human mind](humanity.md) is vastly complicated, and examining it is inherently recursive. Most of the solid scientific work in social science floats back to neurology, which is itself more a division of biochemistry.

The domain of psychology may be the largest "hard" science in this field because it observes [human behavior](humanity-universals.md) and [bias](mind-bias.md) mostly in a vacuum. It only gathers a small portion of the picture, though, since we are [*very* social creatures](people-friends.md).

To make matters even more complicated, some "fixed" things like DNA are influenced by psychological states. Parents' [trauma](hardship-ptsd.md), for example, can pass on through genetics, further complicating an already-hazy "nature vs. nurture" debate within psychology.

There are *many* social sciences, and they all have a limited scope of influence:

- [Sociology](groups-small.md): measuring how groups of people behave
- [Cultural anthropology](people-culture.md): measuring [comparisons](people-culture.md) of how groups of people behave
- [Political science](politics-systems.md): measuring how to govern large groups of people
- [Economics](economics.md): measuring interactions and activity in large groups

Obvious questions that remain unanswered:

- What is the purpose of living?
- Why does the placebo effect work?
- Why are 9 out of 10 people right-handed?
- Can we make an [AI](computers-ai.md) that'll sustain a believable human-like conversation?