Sciences are broadly divisible into the natural and social groups, the former being either physical or biological. Social sciences such as economics and sociology regard man not as an isolated individual but as a member of a group. This involves the observation of the behaviour of individuals in their varieties of association among themselves, and within everything that helps to create or modify these relationships and groupings of men, for example, geography, climate, weather, sociology, heritage, traditions, history, economic framework, etc.; that is, social sciences study the matrix in which the social institutions are embedded. Sometimes, this web of social science is termed ‘socio-sphere’ of ‘polit-sphere’ and is compared with the successive layers of an onion, each layer represented by one social science. Thus, anthropology, history, economics, politics, ethics and so on, are not separate and distinct branches, each independent of the other; they are really interdependent studies of the same centre of interest, viz., man, but from different angles or at different levels. This feature, which, in a way, distinguishes social sciences from physical ones, emphasizes that a social scientist must acquire a wider background and view his problems from the macro rather than the micro angle.
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