Classification of sciences by subject of study

According to the subject of research, all sciences are divided into natural, humanitarian and technical.

Natural Sciences study the phenomena, processes and objects of the material world. This world is sometimes called the outside world. These sciences include physics, chemistry, geology, biology and other similar sciences. The natural sciences also study man as a material, biological being. One of the authors of the concept of natural sciences as a single system of knowledge was the German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). In his book World Riddles (1899), he pointed to a group of problems (riddles) that are the subject of study, in essence, of all natural sciences as a single system of natural scientific knowledge, natural science. “The riddles of E. Haeckel” can be formulated as follows: how did the Universe come into being? what types of physical interactions operate in the world and do they have a single physical nature? What does everything in the world ultimately consist of? what is the difference between the living and the non-living and what is the place of man in the infinitely changing Universe and a number of other questions of a fundamental nature. Based on the above concept of E. Haeckel on the role of natural sciences in the knowledge of the world, we can give the following definition of natural science.

Natural science is a system of natural scientific knowledge created by the natural sciences in the process of studying the fundamental laws of development of nature and the universe as a whole.

Natural science is the most important section of modern science. The unity and integrity of natural science is given by the natural scientific method underlying all natural sciences.

Humanitarian sciences- these are the sciences that study the laws of development of society and man as a social, spiritual being. These include history, law, economics and other similar sciences. Unlike, for example, biology, where a person is considered as a biological species, in the humanities we are talking about a person as a creative, spiritual being. Technical science- this is the knowledge that a person needs to create the so-called "second nature", the world of buildings, structures, communications, artificial energy sources, etc. The technical sciences include astronautics, electronics, energy and a number of other similar sciences. In the technical sciences, the relationship between natural science and the humanities is more pronounced. Systems created on the basis of knowledge of technical sciences take into account knowledge from the field of humanities and natural sciences. In all the sciences mentioned above, there is specialization and integration. Specialization characterizes a deep study of individual aspects, properties of the object under study, phenomenon, process. For example, an ecologist may devote his entire life to the study of the causes of the "bloom" of a reservoir. Integration characterizes the process of combining specialized knowledge from various scientific disciplines. Today, there is a general process of integration of natural sciences, humanities and technical sciences in solving a number of topical problems, among which global problems of the development of the world community are of particular importance. Along with the integration of scientific knowledge, the process of formation of scientific disciplines at the junction of individual sciences is developing. For example, in the twentieth century such sciences as geochemistry (geological and chemical evolution of the Earth), biochemistry (chemical interactions in living organisms) and others arose. The processes of integration and specialization eloquently emphasize the unity of science, the interconnection of its sections. The division of all sciences on the subject of study into natural, humanitarian and technical faces a certain difficulty: what sciences do mathematics, logic, psychology, philosophy, cybernetics, general systems theory, and some others belong to? This question is not trivial. This is especially true for mathematics. Maths, as noted by one of the founders of quantum mechanics, the English physicist P. Dirac (1902-1984), is a tool specially adapted to deal with abstract concepts of any kind, and in this area there is no limit to its power. The famous German philosopher I. Kant (1724-1804) made the following statement: there is as much science in science as there is mathematics in it. The peculiarity of modern science is manifested in the wide application of logical and mathematical methods in it. There are ongoing discussions about the so-called interdisciplinary and general methodological sciences. The former can present their knowledge about the laws of the objects under study in many other sciences, but as additional information. The latter develop general methods of scientific knowledge, they are called general methodological sciences. The question of interdisciplinary and general methodological sciences is debatable, open, and philosophical.

Theoretical and empirical sciences

According to the methods used in the sciences, it is customary to divide the sciences into theoretical and empirical.

Word "theory" borrowed from the ancient Greek language and means "the conceivable consideration of things." Theoretical Sciences create various models of real-life phenomena, processes and research objects. They make extensive use of abstract concepts, mathematical calculations, and ideal objects. This makes it possible to identify essential connections, laws and regularities of the studied phenomena, processes and objects. For example, in order to understand the patterns of thermal radiation, classical thermodynamics used the concept of a completely black body, which completely absorbs the light radiation incident on it. The principle of making postulates plays an important role in the development of theoretical sciences.

For example, A. Einstein adopted in the theory of relativity the postulate of the independence of the speed of light from the movement of the source of its radiation. This postulate does not explain why the speed of light is constant, but represents the initial position (postulate) of this theory. empirical sciences. The word "empirical" is derived from the name and surname of the ancient Roman physician, philosopher Sextus Empiricus (3rd century AD). He argued that only the data of experience should underlie the development of scientific knowledge. From here empirical means experienced. At present, this concept includes both the concept of an experiment and traditional methods of observation: description and systematization of facts obtained without using the methods of conducting an experiment. The word "experiment" is borrowed from the Latin language and literally means trial and experience. Strictly speaking, the experiment "asks questions" to nature, i.e., special conditions are created that make it possible to reveal the action of the object under these conditions. There is a close relationship between theoretical and empirical sciences: theoretical sciences use the data of empirical sciences, empirical sciences check the consequences arising from theoretical sciences. There is nothing more effective than a good theory in scientific research, and the development of a theory is impossible without an original, creatively designed experiment. At present, the term "empirical and theoretical" sciences has been replaced by more adequate terms "theoretical research" and "experimental research". The introduction of these terms emphasizes the close relationship between theory and practice in modern science.

Fundamental and applied sciences

Taking into account the result of the contribution of individual sciences to the development of scientific knowledge, all sciences are divided into fundamental and applied sciences. The former strongly influence our way of thinking, the second - on our Lifestyle.

Fundamental science explore the deepest elements, structures, laws of the universe. In the 19th century it was customary to call such sciences "purely scientific research", emphasizing their focus solely on understanding the world, changing our way of thinking. It was about such sciences as physics, chemistry and other natural sciences. Some 19th century scholars argued that "physics is salt, and everything else is zero." Today, such a belief is a delusion: it cannot be argued that the natural sciences are fundamental, while the humanities and technical sciences are indirect, depending on the level of development of the former. Therefore, it is advisable to replace the term "fundamental sciences" with the term "fundamental scientific research", which develops in all sciences.

Applied science, or applied scientific research, set as their goal the use of knowledge from the field of fundamental research to solve specific problems in the practical life of people, i.e. they influence our way of life. For example, applied mathematics develops mathematical methods for solving problems in the design, construction of specific technical objects. It should be emphasized that the modern classification of sciences also takes into account the objective function of a particular science. With this in mind, one speaks of exploratory scientific research to solve a particular problem and problem. Exploratory scientific research provides a link between fundamental and applied research in solving a specific task and problem. The concept of fundamentality includes the following features: the depth of research, the scope of application of research results in other sciences, and the functions of these results in the development of scientific knowledge in general.

One of the first classifications of natural sciences is the classification developed by a French scientist (1775-1836). The German chemist F. Kekule (1829-1896) also developed a classification of the natural sciences, which was discussed in the 19th century. In his classification, the main, basic science was mechanics, that is, the science of the simplest of the types of movement - mechanical.

CONCLUSIONS

1. E. Haeckel considered all natural sciences as the fundamental basis of scientific knowledge, emphasizing that without natural science the development of all other sciences would be limited and untenable. This approach emphasizes the important role of natural science. However, the humanities and technical sciences have a significant impact on the development of natural sciences.

2. Science is an integral system of natural science, humanitarian, technical, interdisciplinary and general methodological knowledge.

3. The level of fundamentality of science is determined by the depth and scope of its knowledge, which are necessary for the development of the entire system of scientific knowledge as a whole.

4. In jurisprudence, the theory of state and law belongs to the fundamental sciences, its concepts and principles are fundamental for jurisprudence in general.

5. The natural scientific method is the basis for the unity of all scientific knowledge.

QUESTIONS FOR SELF-TEST AND SEMINARS

1. The subject of research in the natural sciences.

2. What do the humanities study?

3. What are the technical sciences researching?

4. Fundamental and applied sciences.

5. Relationship between theoretical and empirical sciences in the development of scientific knowledge.

MAIN HISTORICAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT OF NATURAL SCIENCE

Basic concepts: classical, non-classical and post-non-classical science, natural-scientific picture of the world, the development of science before the era of modern times, the development of science in Russia

Classical, non-classical and post-non-classical science

Researchers studying science in general distinguish three forms of the historical development of science: classical, non-classical, and post-non-classical science.

Classical science refers to science before the beginning of the 20th century, referring to the scientific ideals, tasks of science and understanding of the scientific method that were characteristic of science until the beginning of the last century. This is, first of all, the belief of many scientists of that time in the rational structure of the surrounding world and in the possibility of an accurate cause-and-effect description of events in the material world. Classical science investigated the two physical forces that dominate nature: the force of gravity and the electromagnetic force. Mechanical, physical and electromagnetic pictures of the world, as well as the concept of energy based on classical thermodynamics, are typical generalizations of classical science. Non-classical science is the science of the first half of the last century. The theory of relativity and quantum mechanics are the basic theories of non-classical science. During this period, a probabilistic interpretation of physical laws is being developed: it is absolutely impossible to predict the trajectory of particles in the quantum systems of the microworld with absolute accuracy. Post-non-classical science(fr. post- after) - science of the late twentieth century. and the beginning of the XXI century. During this period, much attention is paid to the study of complex, developing systems of animate and inanimate nature based on nonlinear models. Classical science dealt with objects whose behavior could be predicted at any desired time. New objects appear in non-classical science (objects of the microcosm), the forecast of behavior of which is given on the basis of probabilistic methods. Classical science also used statistical, probabilistic methods, but it explained the impossibility of predicting, for example, the motion of a particle in Brownian motion. a large number of interacting particles, the behavior of each of which obeys the laws of classical mechanics.

In non-classical science, the probabilistic nature of the forecast is explained by the probabilistic nature of the objects of study themselves (the corpuscular-wave nature of the objects of the microworld).

Post-nonclassical science deals with objects whose behavior becomes impossible to predict from a certain moment, i.e., at this moment a random factor acts. Such objects are discovered by physics, chemistry, astronomy and biology.

Nobel Laureate in Chemistry I. Prigogine (1917-2003) rightly noted that Western science developed not only as an intellectual game or a response to the demands of practice, but also as a passionate search for truth. This difficult search found its expression in the attempts of scientists of different centuries to create a natural-science picture of the world.

The concept of a natural-scientific picture of the world

At the heart of the modern scientific picture of the world lies the position on the reality of the subject of science. “For a scientist,” wrote (1863-1945), “obviously, since he works and thinks like a scientist, there is no doubt about the reality of the subject of scientific research and cannot be.” The scientific picture of the world is a kind of photographic portrait of what actually exists in the objective world. In other words, the scientific picture of the world is an image of the world, which is created on the basis of natural scientific knowledge about its structure and laws. The most important principle of creating a natural-scientific picture of the world is the principle of explaining the laws of nature from the study of nature itself, without resorting to unobservable causes and facts.

Below is a summary of the scientific ideas and teachings, the development of which led to the creation of the natural scientific method and modern natural science.

ancient science

Strictly speaking, the development of the scientific method is connected not only with the culture and civilization of Ancient Greece. In the ancient civilizations of Babylon, Egypt, China and India, the development of mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy took place. In 301 BC. e. the troops of Alexander the Great entered Babylon, representatives of Greek scholarship (scientists, doctors, etc.) always participated in his conquest campaigns. By this time, the Babylonian priests had sufficiently developed knowledge in the field of astronomy, mathematics and medicine. From this knowledge, the Greeks borrowed the division of the day into 24 hours (2 hours for each constellation of the zodiac), the division of the circle into 360 degrees, the description of the constellations and a number of other knowledge. Let us briefly present the achievements of ancient science from the point of view of the development of natural science.

Astronomy. In the III century. BC e. Eratosthenes of Cyrenai calculated the size of the Earth, and quite accurately. He also created the first map of the known part of the Earth in a degree grid. In the III century. BC e. Aristarchus from Samos proposed a hypothesis about the rotation of the Earth and other planets known to him around the Sun. He substantiated this hypothesis by observations and calculations. Archimedes, the author of unusually deep works on mathematics, an engineer, built in the 2nd century. BC e. planetarium powered by water. In the 1st century BC e. the astronomer Posidonius calculated the distance from the Earth to the Sun, the distance he obtained is approximately 5/8 of the actual one. The astronomer Hipparchus (190-125 BC) created a mathematical system of circles to explain the apparent movement of the planets. He also created the first catalog of stars, included 870 bright stars in it and described the appearance of a “new star” in a system of previously observed stars, and thus opened up an important question for discussion in astronomy: are there any changes in the supralunar world or not. It was only in 1572 that the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) again turned to this problem.

The system of circles created by Hipparchus was developed by K. Ptolemy (100-170 AD), the author geocentric system of the world. Ptolemy added descriptions of another 170 stars to Hipparchus' catalog. The system of the universe of K. Ptolemy developed the ideas of Aristotelian cosmology and geometry of Euclid (III century BC). In it, the center of the world was the Earth, around which the then known planets and the Sun revolved in a complex system of circular orbits. Comparison of the location of the stars according to the catalogs of Hipparchus and Ptolemy - Tycho Brahe allowed astronomers in the XVIII century. to refute the postulate of Aristotle's cosmology: "The constancy of the sky is the law of nature." There is also evidence of significant achievements of ancient civilization in medicine. In particular, Hippocrates (410-370 BC) was distinguished by the breadth of coverage of medical issues. His school achieved the greatest success in the field of surgery and in the treatment of open wounds.

An important role in the development of natural science was played by the doctrine of structure of matter and cosmological ideas of ancient thinkers.

Anaxagoras(500-428 BC) argued that all bodies in the world consist of infinitely divisible small and innumerably many elements (seeds of things, homeomers). From these seeds, by their random movement, chaos was formed. Along with the seeds of things, as Anaxagoras argued, there is a "world mind", as the finest and lightest substance, incompatible with the "seeds of the world." The world mind creates order in the world out of chaos: it unites homogeneous elements, and separates heterogeneous ones from each other. The sun, according to Anaxagoras, is a red-hot metal block or stone many times larger than the city of the Peloponnese.

Leucippus(V century BC) and his student Democritus(V century BC), as well as their followers already in a later period - Epicurus (370-270 BC) and Titus Lucretius Kara (I in. n. e.) - created the doctrine of atoms. Everything in the world consists of atoms and emptiness. Atoms are eternal, they are indivisible and indestructible. There are an infinite number of atoms, the shapes of atoms are also infinite, some of them are round, others are hooked, etc., ad infinitum. All bodies (solid, liquid, gaseous), as well as what is called the soul, are composed of atoms. The variety of properties and qualities in the world of things phenomena is determined by the variety of atoms, their number and the type of their compounds. The human soul is the finest atoms. Atoms cannot be created or destroyed. Atoms are in perpetual motion. The reasons that cause the movement of atoms are inherent in the very nature of atoms: they are characterized by heaviness, "shaking" or, speaking in modern language, pulsation, trembling. Atoms are the only and true reality, reality. The void in which the eternal movement of atoms takes place is only a background, devoid of structure, an infinite space. Emptiness is a necessary and sufficient condition for the perpetual motion of atoms, from the interaction of which everything is formed both on Earth and in the entire Universe. Everything in the world is causally determined by virtue of necessity, the order that originally exists in it. The "vortex" motion of atoms is the cause of everything that exists not only on the planet Earth, but also in the Universe as a whole. There are an infinite number of worlds. Since atoms are eternal, no one created them, and therefore there is no beginning of the world. Thus, the Universe is a movement from atoms to atoms. There are no goals in the world (for example, such a goal as the emergence of man). In the knowledge of the world, it is reasonable to ask why something happened, for what reason, and it is completely unreasonable to ask for what purpose it happened. Time is the unfolding of events from atoms to atoms. “People,” Democritus argued, “invented an image of chance in order to use it as a pretext to cover up their own folly.”

Plato (IV century BC) - ancient philosopher, teacher of Aristotle. Among the natural-science ideas of Plato's philosophy, a special place is occupied by the concept of mathematics and the role of mathematics in the knowledge of nature, the world, the universe. According to Plato, sciences based on observation or sensory knowledge, such as physics, cannot lead to adequate, true knowledge of the world. Of mathematics, Plato considered the basic arithmetic, since the idea of ​​a number does not need its justification in other ideas. This idea that the world is written in the language of mathematics is deeply connected with Plato's teachings about the ideas or essences of things in the surrounding world. This teaching contains a deep thought about the existence of connections and relations that have a universal character in the world. Plato concluded that astronomy is closer to mathematics than physics, since astronomy observes and expresses in quantitative mathematical formulas the harmony of the world created by the demiurge, or god, the best and most perfect, integral, resembling a huge organism. The doctrine of the essence of things and the concept of mathematics of Plato's philosophy had a huge impact on many thinkers of subsequent generations, for example, on the work of I. Kepler (1570-1630): “Creating us in our own image,” he wrote, “God wanted us to be able to perceive and share his own thoughts with him... Our knowledge (of numbers and magnitudes) is of the same kind as God's, but at least insofar as we can understand at least something during this mortal life. I. Kepler tried to combine terrestrial mechanics with celestial, assuming the presence in the world of dynamic and mathematical laws governing this perfect world created by God. In this sense, I. Kepler was a follower of Plato. He tried to combine mathematics (geometry) with astronomy (the observations of T. Brahe and the observations of his contemporary G. Galileo). From mathematical calculations and observational data of astronomers, Kepler had the idea that the world is not an organism, like Plato, but a well-functioning mechanism, a celestial machine. He discovered three mysterious laws, according to which the planets do not move in circles, but on ellipses around the sun. Kepler's laws:

1. All planets move in elliptical orbits with the sun at the center.

2. A straight line connecting the Sun and any planet describes the same area in equal time intervals.

3. The cubes of the average distances of the planets from the Sun are related as the squares of their periods of revolution: R 13/R 23 - T 12/T 22,

where R 1, R 2 - the distance of the planets to the Sun, T 1, T 2 - the period of revolution of the planets around the sun. I. Kepler's laws were established on the basis of observations and contradicted Aristotelian astronomy, which was universally recognized in the Middle Ages and had its supporters in the 17th century. I. Kepler considered his laws to be illusory, since he was convinced that God determined the motion of the planets in circular orbits in the form of a mathematical circle.

Aristotle(IV century BC) - philosopher, founder of logic and a number of sciences, such as biology and control theory. The device of the world, or cosmology, of Aristotle is as follows: the world, the Universe, has the shape of a ball with a finite radius. The surface of the ball is a sphere, so the universe consists of nested spheres. The center of the world is the Earth. The world is divided into sublunar and supralunar. The sublunar world is the Earth and the sphere on which the Moon is attached. The whole world consists of five elements: water, earth, air, fire and ether (radiant). Everything that is in the supralunar world consists of ether: stars, luminaries, the space between the spheres and the supralunar spheres themselves. Ether cannot be perceived by the senses. In the knowledge of everything that is in the sublunar world, which does not consist of ether, our feelings, observations, corrected by the mind, do not deceive us and provide adequate information about the sublunar world.

Aristotle believed that the world was created for a specific purpose. Therefore, in him everything in the Universe has its intended purpose or place: fire, air tend upwards, earth, water - to the center of the world, to the Earth. There is no emptiness in the world, i.e. everything is occupied by ether. In addition to the five elements that Aristotle is talking about, there is something else "indefinite", which he calls the "first matter", but in his cosmology the "first matter" does not play a significant role. In his cosmology, the supralunar world is eternal and unchanging. The laws of the supralunar world differ from the laws of the sublunar world. The spheres of the supralunar world move uniformly in circles around the Earth, making a complete revolution in one day. On the last sphere is the "prime mover". Being motionless, it gives movement to the whole world. The sublunar world has its own laws. Changes, appearances, disintegration, etc. dominate here. The sun and stars are composed of ether. It has no effect on celestial bodies in the supralunar world. Observations indicating that something is flickering, moving, etc. in the firmament of heaven, according to Aristotle's cosmology, are the result of the influence of the Earth's atmosphere on our senses.

In understanding the nature of movement, Aristotle distinguished four types of movement: a) increase (and decrease); b) transformation or qualitative change; c) creation and destruction; d) movement as movement in space. Objects in relation to movement, according to Aristotle, can be: a) motionless; b) self-propelled; c) moving not spontaneously, but through the action of other bodies. Analyzing the types of movement, Aristotle proves that they are based on the type of movement, which he called movement in space. Movement in space can be circular, rectilinear and mixed (circular + rectilinear). Since there is no emptiness in the world of Aristotle, the movement must be continuous, that is, from one point in space to another. It follows from this that rectilinear motion is discontinuous, so, having reached the boundary of the world, a ray of light, propagating along a straight line, must interrupt its motion, i.e., change its direction. Aristotle considered the circular motion to be the most perfect and eternal, uniform, it is this that is characteristic of the motion of the celestial spheres.

The world, according to the philosophy of Aristotle, is the cosmos, where man is given the main place. In matters of the relationship between living and non-living, Aristotle was a supporter, one might say, of organic evolution. Aristotle's theory or hypothesis of the origin of life assumes "spontaneous generation from particles of matter" that have in themselves some kind of "active principle", entelechy (Greek. entelecheia- completion), which, under certain conditions, can create an organism. The doctrine of organic evolution was also developed by the philosopher Empedocles (5th century BC).

The achievements of the ancient Greeks in the field of mathematics were significant. For example, the mathematician Euclid (III century BC) created geometry as the first mathematical theory of space. Only at the beginning of the XIX century. a new non-Euclidean Geometry, whose methods were used to create the theory of relativity, the basis of non-classical science.

The teachings of ancient Greek thinkers about matter, matter, atoms contained a deep natural-scientific idea about the universal nature of the laws of nature: atoms are the same in different parts of the world, therefore, atoms in the world obey the same laws.

Questions for the seminar

Various classifications of natural sciences (Ampère, Kekule)

ancient astronomy

ancient medicine

The structure of the world.

Maths

Even as a schoolgirl, I thought: why do I need this natural science? Can't I tell an oak leaf from a maple, a birch from a viburnum? But studying natural sciences is important! At least in order to know which herb to brew tea from when your stomach suddenly hurts on vacation.

The natural sciences are grouped into three groups

There are a lot of natural sciences today. They are trying to study and understand the world around us. In my opinion, they can be grouped into three groups:

• physical sciences;
• geological sciences;
• biological sciences.

All of these are natural sciences. The first group studies inanimate natural objects, as well as the laws that govern them. This includes physics, chemistry, astronomy.

In physics, scientists try to study the universe, the set of basic laws that explain the smallest and largest things.

In chemistry, the composition, structure, changes and properties of substances are studied, guided by chemical bonds and reactions. I really liked the experiments in chemistry lessons. When something gurgled in the test tubes, it changed color and even exploded. The main thing is not to overdo it. Because you can blow up the school.

Astronomy is the study of celestial bodies. The origin of the planet on which we live. Other planets, stars, comets and entire galaxies. Do you know that when we look at the stars, we see the distant, distant past?

Deepening into the bowels

Geological sciences force us to go deeper into the depths. They study the origin and structure of the Earth, the geospheres that make it up. I am convinced that if you study the geological sciences well, then you can dig up gold.

This group includes geology, oceanography, mineralogy, geodynamics, paleontology. The most interesting of them, in my opinion, is paleontology. She studies the life that was on our planet in prehistoric periods. All these dinosaur skeletons, mammoth bones always amaze me.

Who lives on our planet

Biological sciences study living beings. Their structure, origin, evolution, functions. Only during schooling, students are introduced to almost twenty biological sciences. I'm not sure that it takes so much, but I would gladly sit in the lessons again to learn something interesting. Just listen to the names themselves: lichenology, mycology, cytology, histology. Learn and learn!

Many sciences unite with each other in order to better investigate this or that phenomenon. This is how astrophysics, biophysics, geochemistry, biochemistry, astrochemistry and others arise.

The newest book of facts. Volume 3 [Physics, chemistry and technology. History and archeology. Miscellaneous] Kondrashov Anatoly Pavlovich

Where did the name "physics" come from?

The name "physics" comes from the Greek word physis - nature. Initially, in the era of ancient culture, science was not divided and covered the entire body of knowledge about natural phenomena. With the differentiation of knowledge and research methods, separate sciences, including physics, emerged from the general science of nature.

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From the book 3333 tricky questions and answers author Kondrashov Anatoly Pavlovich

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Where did the name of the women's bikini swimsuit come from? A very open swimwear for women, consisting of a tight bra and swimming trunks, got its name from the name of the atoll (coral island) Bikini in the Pacific Ocean, characterized by a hot climate in which

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Where did the word fresco come from? Painting on the wall is called wall painting. If the drawing is applied to wet, dry plaster with paints diluted in water, then this is a fresco - one of the wall painting techniques. Thanks to wall paintings, decorative

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Where did the name "Kremlin" come from? The word "Kremlin" came to us from the depths of centuries. And this name is related not only to the Moscow Kremlin, which is a political symbol of the Russian state. If any of you happened to be in Novgorod, Pskov,

Science is a sphere of human professional activity, like any other - industrial, pedagogical, etc. Its only difference is that the main goal that it pursues is the acquisition of scientific knowledge. This is its specificity.

History of the development of science

Ancient Greece is considered the European birthplace of science. The inhabitants of this particular country were the first to realize that the world surrounding a person is not at all the same as people who study it only through sensory knowledge think. In Greece, for the first time, the transition of the sensual to the abstract was made, from the knowledge of the facts of the world around us to the study of its laws.

Science in the Middle Ages turned out to be dependent on theology, so its development slowed down significantly. However, over time, as a result of the discoveries received by Galileo, Copernicus and Bruno, it began to exert an ever greater influence on the life of society. In Europe in the 17th century, the process of its formation as a public institution took place: academies and scientific societies were established, scientific journals were published.

New forms of its organization arose at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries: scientific institutes and laboratories, research centers. Science began to exert a great influence on the development of production around the same time. It has become a special kind of it - a spiritual production.

Today, in the field of science, the following 3 aspects can be distinguished:

• science as a result (obtaining scientific knowledge);
• as a process (itself ;
• as a social institution (a set of institutions of science, a community of scientists).

Science as an institution of society

Design and technological institutes (as well as hundreds of different research institutes), libraries, reserves and museums are included in the system of scientific institutions. A significant part of its potential is concentrated in universities. In addition, more and more doctors and candidates of sciences are working in general education schools, gymnasiums, and lyceums, which means that these educational institutions will be more actively involved in scientific work.

Personnel

Any human activity implies that it is carried out by someone. Science is a social institution, the functioning of which is possible only if there are qualified personnel. Their preparation is carried out through postgraduate studies, as well as the degree of Candidate of Science, awarded to people with higher education who have passed special examinations, as well as published the results of their research and publicly defended their PhD thesis. Doctors of Sciences are highly qualified personnel who are trained through the competition or through doctoral studies are nominated from among

Science as a result

Let's move on to the next aspect. As a result, science is a system of reliable knowledge about man, nature and society. Two essential features should be emphasized in this definition. First, science is an interconnected body of knowledge acquired by mankind to date on all known issues. It meets the requirements of consistency and completeness. Secondly, the essence of science lies in the acquisition of reliable knowledge, which should be distinguished from everyday, everyday, inherent in every person.

Properties of science as a result

1. The cumulative nature of scientific knowledge. Its volume doubles every 10 years.
2. The accumulation of scientific knowledge inevitably leads to fragmentation and differentiation. New branches of it are emerging, for example: gender psychology, social psychology, etc.
3. Science in relation to practice has the following functions as a knowledge system:

• descriptive (accumulation and collection of facts, data);
• explanatory - explanation of processes and phenomena, their internal mechanisms;
• normative, or prescriptive - its achievements become, for example, mandatory standards for implementation at school, in production, etc.;
• generalizing - the formulation of patterns and laws that absorb and systematize many disparate facts and phenomena;
• predictive - this knowledge makes it possible to foresee in advance some phenomena and processes that were previously unknown.

Scientific activity (science as a process)

If a practical worker in his activity pursues the achievement of high results, then the tasks of science imply that the researcher should strive to obtain new scientific knowledge. This includes an explanation of why the result in one case or another turns out to be bad or good, as well as a prediction in which cases it will be one way or another. In addition, if a practical worker takes into account in a complex and simultaneously all aspects of the activity, then the researcher, as a rule, is interested in a deep study of only one aspect. For example, from the point of view of mechanics, a person is a body that has a certain mass, has a certain moment of inertia, etc. For chemists, it is the most complex reactor, where millions of different chemical reactions take place simultaneously. Psychologists are interested in the processes of memory, perception, etc. That is, each science investigates various processes and phenomena from a certain point of view. Therefore, by the way, the results obtained can only be interpreted as relative in science is unattainable, this is the goal of metaphysics.

The role of science in modern society

In our time of scientific and technological progress, the inhabitants of the planet are especially clearly aware of the significance and place of science in their lives. Today, more and more attention in society is paid to the implementation of scientific research in various fields. People strive to obtain new data about the world, to create new technologies that improve the process of production of material goods.

Descartes method

Science today is the main human being in the world. It is based on a complex creative process of subject-practical and mental activity of a scientist. Descartes formulated the general rules for this process as follows:

• nothing can be accepted as true until it appears distinct and clear;
• you need to divide difficult questions by the number of parts necessary to solve them;
• it is required to start the study with the most convenient and simple things for knowledge and gradually move on to more complex ones;
• the duty of the scientist is to pay attention to everything, to dwell on the details: he must be completely sure that he has not missed anything.

The ethical side of science

Of particular relevance in modern science are issues that relate to the relationship of the scientist with society, as well as the social responsibility of the researcher. We are talking about how the achievements made by scientists will be applied in the future, whether the knowledge gained will turn against a person.

Discoveries in genetic engineering, medicine, and biology have made it possible to purposefully influence the heredity of organisms to the extent that today it is possible to create organisms with certain predetermined properties. The time has come to abandon the principle of freedom of scientific research, which was previously not limited by anything. We must not allow the creation of weapons of mass destruction. The definition of science today, therefore, must also include the ethical side, since it cannot remain neutral in this respect.

It is customary to refer to the exact sciences such sciences as chemistry, physics, astronomy, mathematics, computer science. It so happened historically that the exact sciences mainly paid attention to inanimate nature. Recently, they say that the science of wildlife, biology, will be able to become accurate, since the same methods are increasingly being used in it as in physics, etc. Already now there is an exact section related to the exact sciences - genetics.

Mathematics is a fundamental science on which many other sciences rely. It is considered exact, although sometimes in the proofs of theorems assumptions are used that are not subject to proof.

Informatics - about the methods of obtaining, accumulating, storing, transmitting, transforming, protecting and using information. Since computers allow all this, computer science is related to computer technology. It includes various disciplines related to information processing, such as the development of programming languages, the analysis of algorithms, and so on.

What distinguishes the exact sciences

Exact sciences study the exact laws, phenomena and objects of nature that can be measured using established methods, instruments and described using well-defined concepts. Hypotheses are based on experiments and logical reasoning and are rigorously tested.

Exact sciences usually deal with numerical values, formulas, unambiguous conclusions. If we take, for example, physics, the laws of nature operate in equal conditions in the same way. In the humanities, such as philosophy, sociology, each person can have his own opinion on most issues and justify it, but he is unlikely to be able to prove that this opinion is the only correct one. In the humanities, the factor of subjectivity is strongly expressed. The measurement results of the exact sciences can be checked, i.e. they are objective.

The essence of the exact sciences can be well understood by the example of computer science and programming, where the “if-then-other” algorithm is used. The algorithm implies a clear sequence of actions to achieve a specific result.

Scientists and researchers continue to make new discoveries in various fields, many phenomena and processes on the planet Earth and in the universe remain unexplored. In view of this, it can be assumed that even any humanities science could become accurate if there were methods that would allow discovering and proving all patterns that are still inexplicable. In the meantime, people simply do not own such methods, so they have to be content with reasoning and draw conclusions based on their experience and observations.

The study of human language as a whole is engaged in linguistics (syn. linguistics and linguistics). Within this scientific discipline, there are: private linguistics, dealing with a separate language or a group of related ones, for example, Slavic; general linguistics, which studies the nature of language, and applied linguistics, which solves the practical problems of native speakers, for example, automated translation.

Instruction

Currently, linguistics includes many sections and subsections that explore the language system from various points of view, studying vocabulary, grammar, phonetics, morphology, etc. The language is studied in the aspects of anthropology (human factor - history, way of life, traditions, culture), cognitivism (correlation between language and consciousness), pragmatism, etc.

Lexicology conducts research in the field of various linguistic layers within a single language, for example, the phraseological composition of a language - proverbs, sayings, set expressions, etc. Separately, professional slang is considered - the terms and jargon of individual subcultures and segments of the population - prison, youth, etc. Lexicology deals with linguistic phenomena, such as, and others. All this is united by a common term - the vocabulary of the language.

Lexicology is very closely related to, which mainly studies not individual words and expressions, but the functional application of the language, highlighting the features of linguistic statements. Stylistics explores the language of politicians, journalists, writers, medical professionals and others. Scientists are looking for the question of how the language differs from oral and written speech, in terms of style. Stylistics indirectly serves educational purposes, demonstrating expressive language means and explaining how they are used. Thus, stylistics comes into contact with an applied discipline - the culture of speech.

Grammar is a separate section of linguistics. The purpose of the section is to study the structure of the language. The tasks of grammar include a description of the ways of forming words, declension, verbs, the formation of tenses, etc. These tasks give rise to two subdivisions of grammar: syntax and morphology. Syntax explores the laws of sentence construction, the combination of words in a phrase. Morphology studies abstract units of language called "morpheme", which are not independent, but are included in