Sciences that admit of absolute precision in their results
This article is about a branch of science. For the company of the same name, see
Exact Sciences (company).
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]
^Grant, Edward (2007), A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 43,
ISBN9781139461092
^"Exact, adj.1", Oxford English Dictionary, Online version (2nd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2016
^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,
ISBN9780520075771
^Neugebauer, Otto (1962), The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, The Science Library (2nd, reprint ed.), New York: Harper & Bros.
^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,
ISBN9780521892667
^Pyenson, Lewis (1993), "Cultural Imperialism and Exact Sciences Revisited", Isis, 84 (1): 103–108,
Bibcode:
1993Isis...84..103P,
doi:
10.1086/356376,
JSTOR235556,
S2CID144588820, [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.
ISBN9780226398341.
^Principe, Lawrence (2011). The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 27.
ISBN9780199567416.
^Grant, Edward (2007), A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 42–43,
ISBN9781139461092
^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,
ISBN9781139461092
^Grant, Edward (2007), A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 303, 312–313,
ISBN9781139461092
^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.