After examining how human life is lived in practice, this chapter turns the analytical lens on the social sciences themselves. What kinds of knowledge do these disciplines actually produce—and why do they so often struggle to explain, predict, or improve real-world outcomes in an age of complexity, acceleration, and AI? This chapter offers a critical but constructive reappraisal of the social sciences as human institutions shaped by cognitive limits, methodological habits, and ideological pressures. It challenges disciplinary silos, the myth of neutral observation, and the over-reliance on narrow methods, arguing instead for a biologically grounded, pan-scientific framework that integrates insights from across the sciences. By exposing how bias, prestige dynamics, and social design risks shape research itself, this chapter outlines a blueprint for renewal: a shift from defending disciplines to defending science, from advocacy to understanding, and from fragmented inquiry to integrated models of human behavior. The chapter makes the case that the future relevance of the social sciences depends on crossing boundaries—carefully, ethically, and with a clear-eyed view of human nature.