Positive vs normative social sciences

If you’ve seen my philosophy course (specially the Three Domains of Knowledge article), you’ll have seen my definition of ethics as the study of what an individual should do – and the natural dual I described of this is what an individual does observe, which is the definition of physics/science.

But another, less fundamental dual of ethics is the study of what an individual does do – social science. This is on a fundamental level just a subfield of physics, as what individuals do are ultimately just things you can observe. However, the analogies between “positive” and “normative” social science are often striking and of interest to many people.

Here’s a table:

Ethics	Social science
Statecraft	Political science
Political economy	Economics
Foreign policy	International Relations
Political ideologies	Law
Cultural beliefs	Anthropology
Personal morality	Human behavior