“Classification of natural sciences. Development of natural science and natural sciences

System of natural science knowledge

natural science is one of the components of the system of modern scientific knowledge, which also includes complexes of technical and human sciences. Natural science is an evolving system of ordered information about the laws of motion of matter.

The objects of study of individual natural sciences, the totality of which as early as the beginning of the 20th century. bore the name of natural history, from the time of their inception to the present day they have been and remain: matter, life, man, Earth, the Universe. Accordingly, modern natural science groups the main natural Sciences in the following way:

• physics, chemistry, physical chemistry;
• biology, botany, zoology;
• anatomy, physiology, genetics (the doctrine of heredity);
• geology, mineralogy, paleontology, meteorology, physical geography;
• astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics, astrochemistry.

Of course, only the main natural ones are listed here, in fact modern natural science is a complex and branched complex, including hundreds of scientific disciplines. Physics alone unites a whole family of sciences (mechanics, thermodynamics, optics, electrodynamics, etc.). As the volume of scientific knowledge grew, certain sections of sciences acquired the status of scientific disciplines with their own conceptual apparatus, specific research methods, which often makes them difficult to access for specialists involved in other sections of the same, say, physics.

Such differentiation in the natural sciences (as, indeed, in science in general) is a natural and inevitable consequence of ever narrower specialization.

At the same time, counter processes also occur naturally in the development of science, in particular, natural science disciplines are formed and formed, as they often say, “at the junctions” of sciences: chemical physics, biochemistry, biophysics, biogeochemistry and many others. As a result, the boundaries that were once defined between individual scientific disciplines and their sections become very conditional, mobile and, one might say, transparent.

These processes, leading, on the one hand, to a further increase in the number of scientific disciplines, but, on the other hand, to their convergence and interpenetration, are one of the evidence of the integration of the natural sciences, reflecting a general trend in modern science.

It is here, perhaps, that it is appropriate to turn to such a scientific discipline, which, of course, has a special place as mathematics, which is a research tool and a universal language not only of the natural sciences, but also of many others - those in which quantitative patterns can be seen.

Depending on the methods underlying research, we can talk about the natural sciences:

• descriptive (exploring factual data and relationships between them);
• accurate (building mathematical models to express established facts and connections, i.e. patterns);
• applied (using the systematics and models of descriptive and exact natural sciences for the development and transformation of nature).

Nevertheless, a common generic feature of all sciences that study nature and technology is the conscious activity of professional scientists aimed at describing, explaining and predicting the behavior of the objects under study and the nature of the phenomena being studied. The humanities are distinguished by the fact that the explanation and prediction of phenomena (events) is based, as a rule, not on an explanation, but on an understanding of reality.

This is the fundamental difference between sciences that have objects of study that allow for systematic observation, multiple experimental verification and reproducible experiments, and sciences that study essentially unique, non-repeating situations that, as a rule, do not allow an exact repetition of an experiment, conducting more than once of some kind. or experiment.

Modern culture seeks to overcome the differentiation of cognition into many independent areas and disciplines, primarily the split between the natural and human sciences, which clearly emerged at the end of the 19th century. After all, the world is one in all its infinite diversity, therefore, relatively independent areas unified system human knowledge organically interconnected; difference here is transient, unity is absolute.

Nowadays, the integration of natural science knowledge has clearly been outlined, which manifests itself in many forms and becomes the most pronounced trend in its development. Increasingly, this trend is also manifested in the interaction of the natural sciences with the humanities. Evidence of this is the advancement of the principles of systemicity, self-organization and global evolutionism to the forefront of modern science, opening up the possibility of combining the most diverse scientific knowledge into an integral and consistent system, united by common laws of evolution of objects of different nature.

There is every reason to believe that we are witnessing an ever-increasing convergence and mutual integration of the natural and human sciences. This is confirmed by the widespread use in humanitarian research, not only technical means and information technologies used in the natural and technical sciences, but also general scientific methods research developed in the process of development of natural science.

The subject of this course is the concepts related to the forms of existence and movement of living and inanimate matter, while the laws that determine the course of social phenomena are the subject of the humanities. However, it should be borne in mind that, no matter how different the natural and human sciences are, they have a generic unity, which is the logic of science. It is the submission to this logic that makes science a sphere of human activity aimed at revealing and theoretically systematizing objective knowledge about reality.

The natural-scientific picture of the world is created and modified by scientists of different nationalities, among whom are convinced atheists and believers of various faiths and denominations. However, in their professional activities, they all proceed from the fact that the world is material, that is, it exists objectively, regardless of the people who study it. Note, however, that the process of cognition itself can influence the studied objects of the material world and how a person imagines them, depending on the level of development of research tools. In addition, every scientist proceeds from the fact that the world is fundamentally cognizable.

The process of scientific knowledge is the search for truth. However, absolute truth in science is incomprehensible, and with each step along the path of knowledge, it moves further and deeper. Thus, at each stage of cognition, scientists establish relative truth, realizing that at the next stage, more accurate knowledge, more adequate to reality, will be achieved. And this is another evidence that the process of cognition is objective and inexhaustible.

Modern science, being part of culture, is also not homogeneous. It is primarily subdivided into humanitarian and natural science branches, according to which the subject of their research lies in the field of social consciousness or social being. In our discipline, the main concepts developed by modern natural sciences will be considered.

Enatural sciences vary in degree of generality depending on the subject of their study. So, perhaps, mathematics, the science of relationships, has the greatest degree of generality today. Everything to which the concepts can be applied: more, less, equal, not equal, refers to the area of ​​applicability of mathematics. Therefore, the use of mathematical methods has become an integral part of the methodology of most applied sciences.

Physics, the science of motion, has a huge degree of generality. Movement is a necessary attribute of matter. It permeates all aspects of social life and is reflected in the public consciousness. Therefore, the developments created by physics turn out to be useful far beyond the traditional scope of their application.

Take, for example, the economy of a capitalist society. The movement of capital and goods plays a significant role in it. The product created by the manufacturer moves to the consumer, while its monetary equivalent makes the opposite movement.

Physics is well aware of such systems with a qualitative transformation of motion and the presence feedback between their elements. A typical example of such a system is, for example, an oscillatory circuit consisting of a capacitor, an inductor and a resistance (resistor) connected in series. Such systems are well described by mathematical equations that have two types of solutions: oscillatory, if the feedback level is high, and relaxational, if sufficient attenuation is introduced into the feedback circuit. This attenuation is determined by the amount of energy dissipated in the feedback loop.

Capitalism of the stage of primitive accumulation, described in detail by K. Marx in his famous work “Capital”, had a significant level of feedback, which should have led to oscillatory processes in the economy. Indeed, such capitalism was characterized by crises of overproduction. Because of the possibility of crises, capitalism was declared “decaying”.

The analysis of crises, produced mainly in the United States, led economists to the conclusion that an element of dispersion should be introduced into the chain of commodity-money movement.

You can disperse the goods. Such attempts were made in the United States during the so-called Great Depression. Wheat was drowned in Hudson Bay, oranges were burned in locomotive fireboxes. The destruction of material values, of course, reduces the scope of fluctuations in the commodity-money flow. However, in general, it is disadvantageous to society.

More successful was the dispersion of money. It is expressed as a balance of payments deficit. Simply put, the whole society begins to live in debt. As a result of this dispersion, the crises of overproduction in the modern capitalist economy have disappeared.

After the Arab oil countries entered the arena, which were not covered by the mechanism of dispersion of the commodity-money mass, the capitalist world was again in a fever. However, diplomatic efforts and international economic sanctions made it possible to bring the economies of these countries into general scheme payment deficit. After that, relative stability returned to the capitalist world.

Chemistry, the science of the structure of matter and its transformation, is next in terms of the degree of generality of the subject. It is served by physics and mathematics as auxiliary tools. Chemistry has a well-defined and very broad field of application.

The scope of biology is even more limited, but certainly no less important. This is the science of life. Its understanding requires deep knowledge in the field of mathematics, physics, chemistry. To understand the full depth of the problems facing biology, think at your leisure about how the living differs from the non-living.

Chemistry and biology are remarkable in that they developed and developed the concept of classification. In addition to chemistry and biology, it is widely used in computational mathematics and is of undoubted interest to students of economics.

In addition to the listed fundamental natural sciences, there is also a large number of applied sciences. For example, geology and geography are the sciences of the earth and its structure. Anatomy and physiology study the biological characteristics of a person. Today, the so-called frontier scientific disciplines are very popular. As they said before: "Disciplines emerging at the intersection of sciences." These are biophysics, biochemistry, physical chemistry, mathematical physics, etc. Modern ecology plays a special role among them - a science designed to solve a global environmental problem created by mankind literally in recent decades.

Back at the end of the last century, the Earth was mainly an agricultural planet with a relatively small number of cities and towns. low level industrial production. Agriculture was practically non-waste. For example, go to a modern village (I don't mean holiday villages). There you usually will not find landfills. Items included in peasant use are almost completely and completely disposed of.

A completely different picture is observed in cities. Humanity has come to the point where it can be crushed by the waste of its own life, primarily household waste and waste from modern chemical and processing industries. The general tendency for the so-called developed countries to oust harmful industries to underdeveloped countries (including Russia) does not save the situation. The solution can only be found by the united efforts of all mankind.

1. Natural sciences - concept and subject of study 3

2. History of the birth of natural science 3

3. Patterns and features of the development of natural science 6

4. Classification of natural sciences 7

5. Basic methods of natural science 9

Literature

Arutsev A.A., Ermolaev B.V., et al. Concepts of modern natural science. - M., 1999.

Matyukhin S.I., Frolenkov K.Yu. Concepts of modern natural science. - Orlov, 1999.

1. Natural sciences - the concept and subject of study

Natural science is the natural sciences or the totality of sciences about nature. On the present stage development of all sciences are divided into public or humanitarian, and natural.

The subject of study of social sciences is human society and the laws of its development, as well as phenomena, one way or another connected with human activity.

The subject of study of the natural sciences is the Nature surrounding us, that is, various types of matter, the forms and laws of their movement, their connections. The system of natural sciences, taken in their mutual connection as a whole, forms the basis of one of the main areas of scientific knowledge about the World - natural science.

The immediate or immediate goal of natural science is knowledge of objective Truth , entity search phenomena of nature, the formulation of the basic laws of Nature, which makes it possible to foresee or create new phenomena. The ultimate goal of natural science is practical use of learned laws , forces and substances of Nature (production-applied side of knowledge).

Natural science, therefore, is the natural scientific foundation of the philosophical understanding of Nature and Man as part of this Nature, theoretical basis industry and Agriculture, technology and medicine.

1. 2. History of the birth of natural science

The origins of modern science are the ancient Greeks. More ancient knowledge has come down to us only in the form of fragments. They are unsystematic, naive and alien to us in spirit. The Greeks were the first to invent proof. Neither in Egypt, nor in Mesopotamia, nor in China such a concept existed. Maybe because all these civilizations were based on tyranny and unconditional submission to authorities. In such circumstances, even the very idea of ​​reasonable evidence seems seditious.

In Athens for the first time ever world history a republic emerged. Despite the fact that it flourished in the labor of slaves, in Ancient Greece conditions were created under which a free exchange of opinions became possible, and this led to an unprecedented flourishing of the sciences.

In the Middle Ages, the need for a rational knowledge of nature completely died out along with attempts to comprehend the destiny of man within the framework of various religious denominations. For almost ten centuries, religion has given exhaustive answers to all questions of life that were not subject to criticism or even discussion.

The writings of Euclid, the author of the geometry that is now studied in all schools, were translated into Latin and became known in Europe only in the 12th century. However, at that time they were perceived simply as a set of witty rules that had to be memorized - they were so alien to the spirit of medieval Europe, accustomed to believe, and not to seek the roots of Truth. But the volume of knowledge grew rapidly, and they could no longer be reconciled with the direction of thought of medieval minds.

The end of the Middle Ages is usually associated with the discovery of America in 1492. Some indicate an even more precise date: December 13, 1250, the day King Frederick II of Hohenstaufen died in the castle of Florentino near Lucera. Of course, one should not take such dates seriously, but several such dates taken together create an undoubted feeling of the authenticity of the turning point that occurred in the minds of people at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. In history, this period is called the Renaissance. Obeying the internal laws of development and for no apparent reason, Europe in just two centuries revived the rudiments of ancient knowledge, which had been forgotten for more than ten centuries and later called scientific.

During the Renaissance, people's minds turned from the desire to realize their place in the world to attempts to understand its rational structure without reference to miracles and divine revelation. At first, the coup was aristocratic in nature, but the invention of printing spread it to all strata of society. The essence of the turning point is the liberation from the pressure of authorities and the transition from the medieval faith to the knowledge of modern times.

The Church opposed the new trends in every possible way, she strictly judged philosophers who recognized that there are things true from the point of view of philosophy, but false from the point of view of faith. But the collapsed dam of faith could no longer be repaired, and the liberated spirit began to look for new ways for its development.

Already in the 13th century, the English philosopher Roger Bacon wrote: “There is a natural and imperfect experience that is not aware of its power and is not aware of its methods: it is used by artisans, not scientists ... Above all speculative knowledge and arts is the ability to produce experiments, and this science is the queen of sciences...

Philosophers must know that their science is powerless unless they apply powerful mathematics to it... It is impossible to distinguish sophism from proof without verifying the conclusion by experience and application.”

In 1440, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) wrote the book On Scientific Ignorance, in which he insisted that all knowledge about nature must be written down in numbers, and all experiments on it should be carried out with scales in hand.

However, the adoption of new views was slow. Arabic numerals, for example, came into general use already in the 10th century, but even in the 16th century, calculations were carried out everywhere not on paper, but with the help of special tokens, even less perfect than clerical accounts.

It is customary to begin the real history of natural science with Galileo and Newton. According to the same tradition, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) is considered the founder of experimental physics, and Isaac Newton (1643-1727) the founder of theoretical physics. Of course, in their time (see historical reference) there was no such division of the single science of physics into two parts, there was not even physics itself - it was called natural philosophy. But such a division has a deep meaning: it helps to understand the features scientific method and, in essence, is equivalent to the division of science into experience and mathematics, which was formulated by Roger Bacon.

Science is a sphere of human activity, which is aimed at the theoretical systematization of knowledge about reality, which is of an objective nature.

Science and scientific knowledge

The basis of any science is the collection of facts, their processing, systematization, as well as critical analysis, which allows you to build a causal relationship.

Hypotheses and theories, which are confirmed by facts or experiments, are formulated in the form of the laws of society or the laws of nature.

Scientific knowledge is a system of knowledge about the laws of society, nature, thinking. It is scientific knowledge that reflects the laws of the development of the world and constitutes its scientific picture.

Scientific knowledge arises as a result of comprehension of human activity and the surrounding reality. Scientific knowledge has various types reliability.

System of sciences

In its subject matter, science is not homogeneous; it forms many separate systems of sciences. In the period of antiquity, all scientific knowledge was united by philosophy - that is, there was a single scientific system.

Over time, mathematics, medicine and astrology separated from philosophy. During the Renaissance, separate systems of sciences became chemistry and physics.

At the end of the 19th century, sociology, psychology and biology acquired the status of independent scientific knowledge. Conventionally, all sciences, according to their subject of study, can be divided into three large systems:

Social sciences (sociology, history, religious studies, social studies);

Engineering sciences (agronomy, mechanics, construction and architecture);

Natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics)

Natural Sciences

Natural sciences are a system of sciences that study the influence of external natural phenomena on human life. The basis of the natural sciences is the correlation of the laws of nature with the laws that man has deduced in the course of his activities.

The basis of all natural sciences is natural science - a science that directly studies natural phenomena. The most significant contribution to the development of the natural sciences was made by such great scientists as Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal and Mikhail Lomonosov.

Social Sciences

Social sciences are a system of sciences, the main subject of which is the study of the laws governing the functioning of society, as well as its main components. Humanity has been interested in the problems of society since antiquity.

It was then that questions began to be raised for the first time about what is the role of the individual in public life what the state should be like, what is needed in order to create a welfare society.

The founders of modern social sciences are Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes. It was they who first formulated the philosophical basis for the development of society.

Research methods

In modern science, there are two main research methods: theoretical and empirical. The empirical method of research is the accumulation of facts, the observation of a phenomenon and the search for a logical connection between the fact and the phenomenon.

sciences studying the properties of nature and natural formations. The use of terms natural, technical, fundamental, etc. to the areas of human activity is rather conditional, since each of them has a fundamental component (studying problems on the border of our knowledge and ignorance), an applied component (studying the problems of applying acquired knowledge in practice), a natural science component (studying problems that arise or exist independently from our will). These terms are, so to speak, diatropic, i.e. describe only the core - the most feature or part of an object.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

NATURAL SCIENCES

acquired the rights of citizenship since the 18th century. the name for the totality of all sciences dealing with the study of nature. The first researchers of nature (natural philosophers) included, each in his own way, all of nature in the circle of his mental activity. The progressive development of the natural sciences and their deepening into research has led to the dismemberment, which has not yet ended, of the unified science of nature into its separate branches - depending on the subject of research or according to the principle of division of labor. The natural sciences owe their authority, on the one hand, to scientific accuracy and consistency, and, on the other hand, to their practical significance as a means of conquering nature. The main areas of the natural sciences - matter, life, man, the Earth, the Universe - allow us to group them as follows: 1) physics, chemistry, physical chemistry; 2) biology, botany, zoology; 3) anatomy, physiology, the doctrine of origin and development, the doctrine of heredity; 4) geology, mineralogy, paleontology, meteorology, geography (physical); 5) astronomy together with astrophysics and astrochemistry. Mathematics, according to a number of natural philosophers, does not belong to the natural sciences, but is a decisive tool for their thinking. In addition, among the natural sciences, depending on the method, there is the following difference: the descriptive sciences are content with the study of factual data and their relationships, which they generalize into rules and laws; exact natural sciences clothe facts and relationships in mathematical form; however, this distinction is made inconsistently. The pure science of nature is limited scientific research, applied science (medicine, agriculture and forestry, and technology in general) uses it to master and transform nature. Next to the sciences of nature are the sciences of the spirit, and philosophy unites both of them into a single science, they act as particular sciences; cf. Physical picture of the world.