It seeks its own cultural, social, and political empowerment. We may leave in abeyance the question of whether or not there exists a Platonic essence to the social sciences. There is no such essence. As an epistemic community with a burgeoning cultural authority social scientists became, in for example the early twentieth century United States, experts to consult. In turn, they became experts consulted.
Philosophy is the search for wisdom.
The social sciences were and are the resultant of the historical endeavors of women and men, claiming to be possessed of a science of the social, to craft a society in which they themselves would play a major part.