The social sciences are the fields of academic scholarship which explore aspects of human society. Social sciences may draw upon empirical methods and attempt to emulate the standards of conventional scientific practice. By contrast, other social scientists employ critical analysis or hermeneutic methods to study objects of enquiry they regard as inconsistent with the conventional approach.

Social science is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences. These fields include: anthropology, archaeology, comparative musicology, communication studies, cultural studies, demography, economics, history, human geography, international development, international relations, linguistics, media studies, philology, political science, psychology (at least in part), social work and sociology.

The term may be used, however, in the specific context of referring to the original sciences of society established in 19th century sociology. Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber are typically cited as the principal architects of modern social science by this definition. Positivist sociologists attempt to emulate the natural sciences as a model for understanding society, and so define "science" in its stricter modern sense. Antipositivists, by contrast, use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than raw empirical observation, and thus treat "science" in its broader, classical sense. In modern academic practice theorists are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies. In the terms of sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, social scientists seek an understanding of the Social Construction of Reality.