Social science means understanding our own
society, and of course understanding societies
around the world. And it's really worthwhile,
it's very important, alongside the physical
sciences to understand how humans behave and
interact.
We know that we need to think about how people
improve their lives, how they can improve
their health, their wellbeing, their economic
situation, but we need to understand a bit
more of the dynamics of how that happens.
Well, social science to me is the
sort of research that actually integrates
everything from hard science at one end to
the individual's life at the other. So it's
the individual, the individual's mind, the
community, the community's will, and moving
all the way even to brain science and so on. And I think
people tend to think of social
science as being sociology, but it's so much more than that.
 
If anything is going to progress successfully,
whether it's science or engineering or medicine,
at the end of the day it's going to involve
humans, and what we need to understand is how
they can be influenced by, and benefit from,
new developments that are made in other sectors in society.
It involves looking at people,
why they don't progress while they're in deprived
areas and left out of society, and the reasons
for those. So there's a strong link, as far
as I'm concerned, between social science and
the other sciences.
I'd say social science is the explanation
of outcomes and developments in the social world
- be that in the economics or politics
or whatever sphere you're interested in.
I think, also, social science is the development
of theoretical knowledge and understanding
about how the social world works, how it fits
together.
