Introduction to Social Science

At the end of the course, the student should have familiarised with the key concepts informing epistemological and methodological debates in social science, such as hypothesis, theory, falsification, verification, covering law, causality, with particular consideration for positivistic paradigms and anti- or post-positivistic reactions.
The student should be aware of the specific difficulties of social scientific disciplines in studying human societies arising from the problematic separation between the studied object and the studying subject, and the link between social science and the political dimension.
He should familiarise with problems of social research design, starting from the specificities characterizing the various stages of social science research.
The student should become aware of the functional classification of social science methods in qualitative and quantitative, familiarising with a number of techniques in both domains, while grasping that contemporary social research increasingly requires the application of different methods and interdisciplinary approaches, which also lead to the necessity of teamwork coordination.
The course also aims at providing a large variety of examples where the concepts and principles described above find their application and didactical clarification. Those examples will focus in particular on the study of technology and its social impact, especially drawing on SGDs.
Finally, the student should become aware of the moral implications, limits and rules informing social science research, as well as of the role and importance of effective communication in the social sciences.