Human science

Human science is the science of humans:  what makes them different from animals, and their limits, which tend to be the same as those of other animals.  Because human bodies are animal bodies, human science is part of biology which leads to Life Science.  However human behaviour includes the use of words, measures, numbers, knowing time and having memory, and such habits as trade - thus economics and psychology are considered to be part of human science.  A general human science is anthropology which studies only the differences between humans and near relatives.

One important debate in human science is whether the exchange of culture (or in economics instructional capital), is only among humans or if it also goes on among our Great Ape near relatives.  If so, then culture is part of primatology and there is no clear line between human science and life sciences.

However, life science also deals with humans as objects of study (notably in medicine), while hard science such as chemistry deals with humans as the observer who does the study - sets the scale at which observation can happen, incurs observer effects - as studied in philosophy of science.

Often sciences have different names based on whether they study humans or not.  For instance economics is the study of how humans make a living, while ecology is the study of how non-humans make a living.  Medicine is normally restricted to humans while veterinary medicine refers to the same techniques made on other species.  One relies more on ethics and less on economics when dealing with humans, at least according to any ethical tradition.

The living, social, and sensory observing aspects of humans are probably all part of the human sciences to the degree they affect how humans view themselves.

Specific human sciences (in addition to anthropology and ethics and economics) include psychology, sociology and linguistics.  There is debate as to whether mathematics is something human or if it is universal - see philosophy of mathematics on this.

 Related pages 
humanities
sense
ecology

Category:Social sciences