Final answer:
Anthropology is a broad discipline that incorporates insights from its four subfields to form a holistic understanding of the human experience, differing from sociology's focus on social structures and patterns and history's emphasis on the chronological recounting of the past.
Step-by-step explanation:
Anthropology is a discipline that covers an incredibly broad spectrum of human experience, with a unique emphasis on the holistic integration of insights from its four primary subfields: biological anthropology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. These subfields collectively contribute to a comprehensive understanding of humanity's central challenges, such as racial injustice and climate change. This differs from other social sciences in that while each of those disciplines tends to specialize in a specific realm of society (e.g., medicine, economics, technology), anthropology strives to understand how seemingly disparate elements of human life are interconnected.
Sociology, on the other hand, is a discipline that often focuses on contemporary societies, analyzing social behaviors, institutions, and structures within a society. Sociologists tend to study patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and culture, frequently using quantitative methods to uncover trends and behaviors within populations. History is concerned with understanding the past through a meticulous examination of records, documents, and physical artifacts. Historians aim to reconstruct events and contexts to understand how they have shaped the present. Their approach is typically more linear and chronological, often focusing on causal relationships throughout time. While all these disciplines share a common interest in human societies and behaviors, the methodologies and focus areas often differ. For instance, when examining economic systems, an anthropologist might seek to understand the cultural and social implications and origins of economic practices, whereas an economist would focus on the functioning and efficiency of the markets themselves. Similarly, a political scientist might investigate the systems of governance and power dynamics. Therefore, while anthropologists often collaborate with other disciplines, their approach remains distinct with an inherently broader and more integrative perspective on human experience.