Exact sciences
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 René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, and Immanuel 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 Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, and others, which resulted in a quantitative investigation of the physical causes of natural phenomena.[15]
Global and Cross-cultural Historical Traditions
Many early civilizations, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China developed mathematical and astronomical traditions that qualify as exact sciences:
- Mesopotamia and Babylonia: development of advanced arithmetic, base-60 mathematics, and astronomical tables for predicting planetary motion.
- Ancient Egypt: geometry and surveying for architecture and land measurement, along with solar and lunar calendar calculations.
- Ancient India: innovations in algebra, zero, trigonometry, and astronomical treatises that enabled planetary modeling.
- China: calendrical astronomy, precise eclipse prediction, mathematical texts such as The Nine Chapters.
These traditions were not isolated and over centuries, knowledge circulated across cultures, via translation, trade, and scholarly exchange. During the period often associated with the “Islamic Golden Age,” scholars in the Islamic world translated earlier works, refined mathematical and astronomical methods, built observatories, and extended scientific reasoning.[16]
As argued by Qidwai, any comprehensive history of science must avoid Eurocentrism and recognize that scientific knowledge emerged, and continues to develop, in a plurality of cultural and religious contexts. A “big picture” history therefore acknowledges how exact sciences evolved globally, shaped by many interacting traditions.[17]
Over time, exact sciences merged with natural philosophy and empirical investigation. Through cross-cultural transmission, by the Renaissance and early modern period, disciplines such as physics and mechanics adopted mathematical and measurement-based methods, thus inheriting the “exact” tradition even when studying material nature. As such, the notion of “exact sciences" should be understood as historically and culturally situated: what counts as “exact” depends on available methods, instruments, social context, and cross-cultural exchange. By viewing exact sciences as a shared human heritage, not confined to one region or civilization, we gain a more inclusive and accurate picture of how mathematical and empirical reasoning developed across the world. This perspective also reminds us that modern science builds on a longue durée of contributions from many cultures, and that mathematical rigor and quantitative precision have long roots in global human history.
See also
[edit]
References
[edit]- ^ Grant, Edward (2007), A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 43, ISBN 9781139461092
- ^ "Exact, adj.1", Oxford English Dictionary, Online version (2nd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2016
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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
- ^ Neugebauer, Otto (1962), The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, The Science Library (2nd, reprint ed.), New York: Harper & Bros.
- ^ 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
{{citation}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) - ^ 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
- ^ 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.
- ^ Shapin, Steven (2018). The Scientific Revolution (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 46–47. ISBN 9780226398341.
- ^ Principe, Lawrence (2011). The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 27. ISBN 9780199567416.
- ^ 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
- ^ 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. Bibcode:1994CuGeo...1..363C. doi:10.1177/147447409400100404. JSTOR 44251730.
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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
- ^ 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
- ^ Montgomery, Scott; Kumar, Alok (2016). A History of Science in World Cultures: Voices of Knowledge. Routledge. ISBN 9780415639835.
{{cite book}}: line feed character in|title=at position 47 (help) - ^ Qidwai, Sarah (2024-01). "History of science, religion and the 'big picture'". BJHS Themes. 9: 183–194. doi:10.1017/bjt.2024.25. ISSN 2058-850X.
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