It would seem that "natural science" and "social science" are fixed terms that are comonly used to describe certain faculties within a university. Social sciences are not unnatural and I don't think that natural sciences are unsocial. Neither one nor the other seems to be "not proper" in my opinion.

I think the term natural and social is associated with what is being studied. Natural refers to naturally occuring factors e.g a rock is a rock - a cell is a cell. Social refers to factors that do not occur without human intervention e.g thoughts, actions, beliefs are social constructions. These relate to the object of study 'natural' and 'social'. The term 'proper' does not refer to the object of study but is a value judgement that infers one thing is proper and the other is not.

There is some overlap - some argue that natural science actually involves a lot of social construction and others argue that the social sciences is very similar to the natural sciences. Of course this argument could go around in circles and anon german raises a very good point about the influence of faculty structures on discipline demarkations. One could always argue that the very nature of social v natural is a social construct.

Sweetchic - as you probably noticed, the original posting from which the expression "proper science" comes from was made in another topic, by someone else. I used it as an example of commonly help misperceptions about social sciences. As to the distinction between social sciences and natural sciences, yes, I am indeed more comfortable with them. (continues)

As Anon pointed out, the terms have more to do with scientific domains than anything else. Camper makes the same point.But the whole thing is very confusing indeed. For instance, the university I attended as an undergrad was organized in three major branches: Human Sciences and Languages, Exact Sciences, Health Sciences; Then there were some other courses like Law, Journalism and Social Service that fell somewhere in between. Mathematics and Statistics were departments of the Exacts Branch. At the university I am now, Statistics is located in the Arts Faculty, just as is Sociology.

Why Sociology is mixed with "Arts" I have no idea... Another curiosity: "Social Sciences", where I come from, means only Sociology, Anthropology and Political Science; that is, Psychology is a Human Science, but not a Social Science. Go figure!
The problem is not in the names themselves, but in what they mean. And yes, I used to make fun of my friends at the Exacts Branch all the time... :-)

PS: Sweetchic, it's the Oxford Concise.

Camper makes a very good point in the original question about ontological and episetmological perpsectives, the very nature of 'science' is the viewpoint - their point of view is poistivist and therefore believe that knowledge is objective and exists indpendetly from the knower. This is direct conflict with the viewpoint of the intepretive reseachers (social) who believe that reality is subjective - ie how people see it and knowledge is contructed by the individual. I don't know how positivists can ever see the validity of social research, it just isnt in their nature!

mmhm, very informative thread for a change guys.