Blog post 2009.10.09 concluded with the definition of science as “a state of knowledge.” Again, in the broadest term, science is not limited to the natural sciences (e.g. biology, chemistry, physics, ichthyology, ornithology, herpetology, microbiology, mammalogy, planktology, paleozoology, geology, meteorology, physiology/anatomy, astronomy, etc.). A wide arrange of social sciences encase our science framework. Anthropology, history, economics, law and government, psychology, geography, philosophy (controversial), and sociology are all examples of social sciences. Many of these topics have subtopics – sub-sciences – so to speak.
Anthropology studies human beings and their ancestors through time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental and social relations, and culture. Archaeology is an excellent example of a well-known anthropologic science.
Economics is concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Microeconomics and macroeconomics deal with the study of economics in terms of individual activity and in terms of a system in its entirety, respectively.
Law and governmental science (in the general of political science) concerns chiefly with the description and analysis of political and especially governmental institutions and processes.
The social sciences concern of the aspects of human society. These forms of science are usually independent of natural science components. Nevertheless, the natural sciences advanced the technology and influenced the humans to progress further to shape today’s society.
One final branch of science is the formal sciences. These deal with (formal) systems similar to logic, computer science, mathematics and number theory, statistics, and linguistics. With a looser definition of a formal science, there is slight overlap with the categorization (taxonomy). For example, some may consider microeconomics a form of both a formal and social science. These formal sciences can be seen as the sciences used to compare the real world with a science of symbols and theoretical rules. However, they should not be used as an interpretation of reality, nor do the rules represent reality in a ‘perfect world.’ Some may even confuse the real world with the theoretical rules of formal sciences.
I think this will be the last of posts concerning with the classification of sciences.
Whew, that must be a lot of material to absorb. I will finish here,
Thank you-
END OF LECTURE.
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You are a born professor, if you ever choose to be one! Your paragraph about the formal sciences took me several reads to understand fully, but I do think I got it. Well done--those are not easy concepts to talk about.
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