Science

What is exact sciences? »Its definition and meaning

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The exact sciences, also known as the hard sciences, pure sciences, or fundamental sciences rely entirely on observation and experimentation as practices to create knowledge based on mathematical language. They are science of high precision and rigor, since the scientific method is used in its purest form to test hypotheses using mathematics as a vehicle to do so.

Precision and rigor are two of the main characteristics of the exact sciences, a branch in which the most rigorous scientific method is used to test hypotheses. These sciences seek the irrefutableness of their postulates using quantifiable and objective predictions.

In the case of exact sciences, it is sought that the hypotheses and postulates are irrefutable through equations and quantifiable and objective mathematical operations. These fundamental principles are known as axioms.

Currently, as established by Rudolf Carnap, the exact sciences are divided into formal (non-experimental) and natural (experimental) sciences. Among the formal sciences, we find mathematics, logic, and formal logic. In the natural sciences they are astronomy, biology and physics.

The exact sciences have laid the foundations for scientific knowledge since its origins. Although it is now clear that not all knowledge can be quantified, from this premise many of the fundamental laws, principles and theories that govern the basic principles that have been assumed for centuries, such as gravity.

Each science has its own dimension. Therefore, there are the social sciences, the health sciences, those that are based on probability (for example, meteorology) or those that deal with some aspect of nature (biology, zoology, etc.). One of the most relevant sciences is mathematics, which is also called exact sciences. The term is used in the plural because mathematics is made up of differentiated branches such as algebra, arithmetic, geometry or probability. On the other hand, the word exact is used because the different areas of mathematics have something in common: their proofs are unequivocal and indisputable, that is, exact.