Exact sciences

This article is about a branch of science. For the company of the same name, see Exact Sciences (company).
Ulugh Beg's meridian arc for precise astronomical measurements (15th c.)

The exact sciences or quantitative sciences, sometimes called the exact mathematical sciences,[1] are those sciences "which admit of absolute precision in their results"; especially the mathematical sciences.[2] Examples of the exact sciences are mathematics, optics, astronomy,[3] and physics, which many philosophers from Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant to the logical positivists took as paradigms of rational and objective knowledge.[4] These sciences have been practiced in many cultures from antiquity[5][6] to modern times.[7][8] Given their ties to mathematics, the exact sciences are characterized by accurate quantitative expression, precise predictions and/or rigorous methods of testing hypotheses involving quantifiable predictions and measurements.[9]

The distinction between the quantitative exact sciences and those sciences that deal with the causes of things is due to Aristotle, who distinguished mathematics from natural philosophy[10] and considered the exact sciences to be the "more natural of the branches of mathematics."[11] Thomas Aquinas employed this distinction when he said that astronomy explains the spherical shape of the Earth[12] by mathematical reasoning while physics explains it by material causes.[13] This distinction was widely, but not universally, accepted until the scientific revolution of the 17th century.[14] Edward Grant has proposed that a fundamental change leading to the new sciences was the unification of the exact sciences and physics by Kepler, Newton, and others, which resulted in a quantitative investigation of the physical causes of natural phenomena.[15]

Linguistics and comparative philology have also been considered exact sciences, most notably by Benjamin Whorf.[16]

  1. ^ Grant, Edward (2007), A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 43, ISBN 9781139461092
  2. ^ "Exact, adj.1", Oxford English Dictionary, Online version (2nd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2016
  3. ^ Drake, Stillman; Swerdlow, N.M.; Levere, T.H. (1999). Essays on Galileo and the History and Philosophy of Science: Volume 1. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-7585-7. JSTOR 10.3138/j.ctvcj2wt5.
  4. ^ Friedman, Michael (1992), "Philosophy and the Exact Sciences: Logical Positivism as a Case Study", in Earman, John (ed.), Inference, Explanation, and Other Frustrations: Essays in the Philosophy of Science, Pittsburgh series in philosophy and history of science, vol. 14, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, p. 84, ISBN 9780520075771
  5. ^ Neugebauer, Otto (1962), The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, The Science Library (2nd, reprint ed.), New York: Harper & Bros.
  6. ^ Sarkar, Benoy Kumar (1918), Hindu Achievements in Exact Science: A Study in the History of Scientific Development, London / New York: Longmans, Green and Company, ISBN 9780598626806
  7. ^ Harman, Peter M.; Shapiro, Alan E. (2002), The Investigation of Difficult Things: Essays on Newton and the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of D.T. Whiteside, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521892667
  8. ^ Pyenson, Lewis (1993), "Cultural Imperialism and Exact Sciences Revisited", Isis, 84 (1): 103–108, Bibcode:1993Isis...84..103P, doi:10.1086/356376, JSTOR 235556, S2CID 144588820, [M]any of the exact sciences... between Claudius Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe were in a common register, whether studied in the diverse parts of the Islamic world, in India, in Christian Europe, in China, or apparently in Mesoamerica.
  9. ^ Shapin, Steven (2018). The Scientific Revolution (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 46–47. ISBN 9780226398341.
  10. ^ Principe, Lawrence (2011). The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 27. ISBN 9780199567416.
  11. ^ Grant, Edward (2007), A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 42–43, ISBN 9781139461092
  12. ^ Cormack, Lesley (1994). "Flat Earth or round sphere: misconceptions of the shape of the Earth and the fifteenth-century transformation of the world". Ecumene. 1 (4): 365. doi:10.1177/147447409400100404. JSTOR 44251730.
  13. ^ Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I, Q. 1, Art. 1, Reply 2, retrieved 3 September 2016, For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e. abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself.
  14. ^ Grant, Edward (2007), A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 303–305, ISBN 9781139461092
  15. ^ Grant, Edward (2007), A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 303, 312–313, ISBN 9781139461092
  16. ^ Benjamin Whorf, Linguistics as an exact science. In Language, thought and reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Edited by J.B. CarrollM.I.T. Press, 1956, 20–232.