Exact sciences

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Sciences that admit of absolute precision in their results

title: "Exact sciences" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["formal-sciences"] description: "Sciences that admit of absolute precision in their results" topic_path: "general/formal-sciences" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exact_sciences" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Sciences that admit of absolute precision in their results ::

::callout[type=note] a branch of science ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Ulugh_Beg's_Astronomic_Observatory.jpg" caption="[[Ulugh Beg]]'s [[meridian arc]] for precise astronomical measurements (15th c.)"] ::

The exact sciences or quantitative sciences, sometimes called the exact mathematical sciences, are those sciences "which admit of absolute precision in their results"; especially the mathematical sciences. Examples of the exact sciences are mathematics, optics, astronomy, 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. These sciences have been practiced in many cultures from antiquity to modern times. 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.

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 and considered the exact sciences to be the "more natural of the branches of mathematics." Thomas Aquinas employed this distinction when he said that astronomy explains the spherical shape of the Earth by mathematical reasoning while physics explains it by material causes. This distinction was widely, but not universally, accepted until the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. 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.

References

References

  1. Grant, Edward. (2007). "A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century". Cambridge University Press.
  2. (June 2016). "Oxford English Dictionary, Online version". Oxford University Press.
  3. (1999). "Essays on Galileo and the History and Philosophy of Science: Volume 1". University of Toronto Press.
  4. Friedman, Michael. (1992). "Inference, Explanation, and Other Frustrations: Essays in the Philosophy of Science". University of California Press.
  5. Neugebauer, Otto. (1962). "The Exact Sciences in Antiquity". Harper & Bros..
  6. Sarkar, Benoy Kumar. (1918). "Hindu Achievements in Exact Science: A Study in the History of Scientific Development". Longmans, Green and Company.
  7. (2002). "The Investigation of Difficult Things: Essays on Newton and the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of D.T. Whiteside". Cambridge University Press.
  8. Pyenson, Lewis. (1993). "Cultural Imperialism and Exact Sciences Revisited". Isis.
  9. Shapin, Steven. (2018). "The Scientific Revolution". The University of Chicago Press.
  10. Principe, Lawrence. (2011). "The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction". Oxford University Press.
  11. Grant, Edward. (2007). "A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century". Cambridge University Press.
  12. Cormack, Lesley. (1994). "Flat Earth or round sphere: misconceptions of the shape of the Earth and the fifteenth-century transformation of the world.". Ecumene.
  13. Aquinas, Thomas. "Summa Theologica".
  14. Grant, Edward. (2007). "A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century". Cambridge University Press.
  15. Grant, Edward. (2007). "A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century". Cambridge University Press.

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