Understanding Social Science | NCERT | Notes | Class 9th

Understanding Society through Time and Traditions

• Society has not always remained the same; over thousands of years it has changed greatly, as early human communities depended directly on nature for survival and gradually learnt to grow crops, domesticate animals, build settlements, develop tools, exchange goods, and organise systems of governance.
• Human settlements developed progressively as villages grew into towns, and towns further developed into cities, while new ideas, inventions, and cultural exchanges gradually transformed people’s ways of life.
• The spirit of inquiry has deep roots in India’s knowledge traditions, where early thinkers valued discussion, questioning, and logical reasoning to understand the world through observation, reflection, and dialogue.
• The concept of the Pañchamahābhūtas describes the natural world as an interconnected system in which human life is embedded, and it helps explain how the environment influences settlement patterns, occupations, architecture, food habits, and health practices; this idea remains relevant as societies respond to modern environmental challenges.
• The idea of vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam, meaning “the world is one family,” expresses the interconnectedness of human societies across different regions and cultures, and this sense of interdependence lies at the core of Social Science’s study of global interactions and relationships.
• Early reflections on governance in India connected political authority with public welfare and ethical responsibility, showing that systematic thinking about governance and the economy existed long before modern academic disciplines developed.
• The Arthaśhāstra, attributed to Kauṭilya and composed about 2,300 years ago, examined administration, economic management, taxation, and the duties of rulers toward their people.
• These Indian knowledge traditions demonstrate that the effort to understand society through observation, reasoning, and reflection has a long history, and modern Social Science continues this legacy by using new tools and methods to study how societies function and change over time.
• To understand the present, we must trace the long journey of continuity and change, exploring how societies evolved, how institutions developed, and how relationships between people and the environment transformed.
• Social scientists study society by observing people’s lives, conducting interviews and surveys, examining documents, and comparing different times and places, so that they can gather information from multiple sources.
• By using evidence from multiple sources, social scientists develop explanations supported by evidence; Social Science therefore explains both what endures and what changes, showing how the past shapes the present and how today’s actions will influence the future.

Social Science as a Study of Disciplines

• Human society is complex, and no single field of study can fully explain it; for example, a drought affects crops (environment), farmers’ incomes (economy), government relief measures (politics), migration to cities (society), and traditional ways of coping with scarcity (culture).
• To understand such connected situations, society must be examined from different perspectives; therefore, Social Science is not a single subject but a group of related disciplines, each focusing on a different aspect of human life, and together they provide a comprehensive and connected understanding of society.
• In Grades 9–10, Social Science mainly draws from four core disciplines—Geography, History, Political Science, and Economics—while other disciplines such as Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology, and Psychology also form part of the broader Social Science family and explore social relationships, ethical reasoning, and human behaviour in greater depth in higher grades.
• Geography studies the Earth, its environments, and relationships between people and their surroundings; History examines the human past and how societies change over time; Political Science analyses governance, power, and citizens’ rights and responsibilities; and Economics explores how societies produce, distribute, and utilise resources to meet their needs.
• Each discipline asks different questions, but all are interconnected and together provide a holistic understanding of society.