Classification of Natural Sciences

The problem of classification of sciences is the complexity of approaches to the separation of scientific disciplines into separate classes. The task of creating a complete system requires the coverage of all sciences, including practical ones, applied. To do this, we need a common unified principle , on the basis of which it would be possible to build a classification.

Human knowledge has three main sides: knowledge that answers the question: what is being studied ?, how is it studied? And why is it studied? In this connection, three aspects of the system are singled out: object-objective, methodological-research and practically-target. The relationship between them is determined by the increase in the proportion of the subjective component.

As a rule, the first big class in all classifications is the natural sciences. To them adjoin abstract mathematical and mathematical, which is referred to the number of sciences, differing among themselves on the subject (object).

The classification of natural sciences is already known from ancient times. Even Aristotle divided all knowledge into theoretical, practical and poetic. But his understanding was far from modern. Mark Varron distinguished grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music, astrology, medicine and architecture. Arab scholars divided their knowledge into Arabic (oratory, poetics) and foreign (medicine, mathematics, astronomy). In the Middle Ages Hugo Saint-Victor divided science into practical, theoretical, mechanical and logical. Roger Bacon singled out logic, grammar, mathematics, metaphysics, ethics and natural philosophy.

Science studies the objects and phenomena of the world around us. The modern classification of sciences is still in fact an approximate character and does not fully reflect the real essence of things. Scientific disciplines are divided into two large groups . The first group includes natural science disciplines (they are engaged in the study of objects and phenomena of nature, that is, that part of the world that is not a product of people's activity, the second group is the humanities that study phenomena that arise as a result of reasonable human activity.

Objects of nature have an internal structure, that is, they themselves consist of smaller objects. On this basis, different in the levels of organization of matter are distinguished: cosmic, geological, biological, planetary, physical, chemical. In this regard, the classification of natural sciences divides them into separate disciplines that correspond to the listed materials. By this criterion, knowledge is divided into astronomy, geology, biology, ecology, physics and chemistry . All the disciplines of this series intersect each other, go to the levels of related knowledge. Physics in its development has discovered even more elementary sublevels, on which matter is organized (molecules, atoms, other elementary particles).

For natural disciplines, a characteristic feature is their non-isolation from each other. During research there is always a need for information about elements that can only be provided by knowledge of another level.

The hierarchical classification of natural sciences shows that those disciplines that are on the lower steps of the ladder are simpler than the higher ones. However, thanks to the simplicity of the material (matter) studied, these disciplines were able to accumulate much more facts and create coherent scientific theories.

This classification of the natural sciences does not include mathematics . And without it, no modern exact science is unthinkable . The fact is that mathematics itself is not in the full sense an exact discipline, because it does not study the matter and objects of the real world, of nature. It is based on laws calculated by man.