Earth science
Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical constitution of its atmosphere. Earth science is the study of our planet’s physical characteristics, from earthquakes to raindrops, floods to fossils. Earth science can be with a much older history. Earth science encompasses four main branches of study, the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, the biosphere, each of, further broken down into more specialized fields. There are both holistic approaches to earth sciences, it is the study of Earth and its neighbors in space. Some earth scientists use their knowledge of the planet to locate and develop energy and mineral resources. Others study the impact of human activity on Earth's environment, design methods to protect the planet; some use their knowledge about earth processes such as volcanoes and hurricanes to plan communities that will not expose people to these dangerous events. The earth sciences can include the study of geology, the lithosphere, the large-scale structure of the earth's interior, as well as the atmosphere and biosphere.
Earth scientists use tools from geography, physics, chemistry and mathematics to build a quantitative understanding of how the earth works and evolves. Earth science affects our everyday lives. For example, meteorologists study the watch for dangerous storms. Hydrologists warn of floods. Seismologists try to predict where they will strike. Geologists study rocks and help to locate useful minerals. Earth scientists work in the field—perhaps climbing mountains, exploring the seabed, crawling through caves, or wading in swamps, they measure and collect samples they record their findings on charts and maps. The following fields of science are categorized within the earth sciences: Physical geography covers aspects of geomorphology, soil study, meteorology and biogeography. Geology describes the rocky parts of its historic development. Major subdisciplines are mineralogy and petrology, geomorphology, stratigraphy, structural geology, engineering geology, sedimentology. Geophysics and geodesy investigate the shape of the Earth, its reaction to forces and its magnetic and gravity fields.
Geophysicists explore the earth's core and mantle as well as the tectonic and seismic activity of the lithosphere. Geophysics is used to supplement the work of geologists in developing a comprehensive understanding of crustal geology in mineral and petroleum exploration. Seismologists use geophysics to understand plate tectonic shifting, as well as predict seismic activity. Soil science covers the outermost layer of the earth's crust, subject to soil formation processes. Major subdivisions in this field of study include pedology. Ecology covers the interactions between the flora; this field of study differentiates the study of Earth from the study of other planets in the Solar System, Earth being the only planet teeming with life. Hydrology and limnology are studies which focus on the movement and quality of the water and involves all the components of the hydrologic cycle on the Earth and its atmosphere. "Sub-disciplines of hydrology include hydrometeorology, surface water hydrology, watershed science, forest hydrology, water chemistry."
Glaciology covers the icy parts of the Earth. Atmospheric sciences cover the gaseous parts of the Earth between the exosphere. Major subdisciplines include meteorology, atmospheric chemistry, atmospheric physics. Plate tectonics, mountain ranges and earthquakes are geological phenomena that can be explained in terms of physical and chemical processes in the earth's crust. Beneath the Earth's crust lies the mantle, heated by the radioactive decay of heavy elements; the mantle is not quite solid and consists of magma, in a state of semi-perpetual convection. This convection process causes the lithospheric plates to move, albeit slowly; the resulting process is known as plate tectonics. Plate tectonics might be thought of as the process; as the result of seafloor spreading, new crust and lithosphere is created by the flow of magma from the mantle to the near surface, through fissures, where it cools and solidifies. Through subduction, oceanic crust and lithosphere returns to the convecting mantle. Areas of the crust where new crust is created are called divergent boundaries, those where it is brought back into the earth are convergent boundaries and those where plates slide past each other, but no new lithospheric material is created or destroyed, are referred to as transform boundaries Earthquakes result from the movement of the lithospheric plates, they occur near convergent boundaries where parts of the crust are forced into the earth as part of subduction.
Volcanoes result from the melting of subducted crust material. Crust material, forced into the asthenosphere melts, some portion of the melted material becomes light enough to rise to the surface—giving birth to volcanoes; the troposphere, mesosphere and exosphere are the five layers which make up Earth's atmosphere. 75 % of the gases in the atmosphere are located within the lowest layer. In all, the atmosphere is made up of about 78.0% nitrogen, 20.9% ox
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics, is an award for outstanding contributions to the field of economics, regarded as the most prestigious award for that field. The award's official name is The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel; the prize was established in 1968 by a donation from Sweden's central bank the Riksbank to the Nobel Foundation to commemorate the bank's 300th anniversary. As it is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895, it is not a Nobel Prize. However, it is referred to along with the Nobel Prizes by the Nobel Foundation. Laureates are announced with the Nobel Prize laureates, receive the award at the same ceremony. Laureates in the Memorial Prize in Economics are selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, it was first awarded in 1969 to the Dutch and Norwegian economists Jan Tinbergen and Ragnar Frisch, "for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes".
An endowment "in perpetuity" from Sveriges Riksbank pays the Nobel Foundation's administrative expenses associated with the prize and funds the monetary component of the award. Since 2012, the monetary portion of the Prize in Economics has totaled 8 million Swedish kronor; this is equivalent to the amount given for the original Nobel Prizes. Since 2006, Sveriges Riksbank has given the Nobel Foundation an annual grant of 6.5 million Swedish kronor for its administrative expenses associated with the prize as well as 1 million Swedish kronor to include information about the prize on the Nobel Foundation's web site. The Prize in Economics is not one of the Nobel Prizes, which were endowed by Alfred Nobel in his will. However, the nomination process, selection criteria, awards presentation of the Prize in Economic Sciences are performed in a manner similar to that of the Nobel Prizes. Laureates are announced with the Nobel Prize laureates, receive the award at the same ceremony; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the prize "in accordance with the rules governing the award of the Nobel Prizes instituted through his will," which stipulate that the prize be awarded annually to "those who... shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."
According to its official website, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences "administers a researcher exchange with academies in other countries and publishes six scientific journals. Every year the Academy awards the Nobel Prizes in Physics and in Chemistry, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the Crafoord Prize and a number of other large prizes"; each September the Academy's Economics Prize Committee, which consists of five elected members, "sends invitations to thousands of scientists, members of academies and university professors in numerous countries, asking them to nominate candidates for the Prize in Economics for the coming year. Members of the Academy and former laureates are authorised to nominate candidates." All proposals and their supporting evidence must be received before February 1. The proposals are reviewed by specially appointed experts. Before the end of September, the committee chooses potential laureates. If there is a tie, the chairman of the committee casts the deciding vote.
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences vote in mid-October to determine the next laureate or laureates of the Prize in Economics. As with the Nobel Prizes, no more than three people can share the prize for a given year. Like the Nobel laureates in physics, physiology or medicine, literature, each laureate in Economics receives a diploma, gold medal, monetary grant award document from the King of Sweden at the annual Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm, on the anniversary of Nobel's death; the first prize in economics was awarded in 1969 to Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen "for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes". In 2009, Elinor Ostrom became. In February 1995, following acrimony within the selection committee pertaining to the awarding of the 1994 Prize in Economics to John Forbes Nash, the Prize in Economics was redefined as a prize in social sciences; this made it available to researchers in such topics as political science and sociology.
Moreover, the composition of the Economics Prize Committee changed to include two non-economists. This has not been confirmed by the Economics Prize Committee; the members of the 2007 Economics Prize Committee are still dominated by economists, as the secretary and four of the five members are professors of economics. In 1978, Herbert A. Simon, whose PhD was in political science, became the first non-economist to win the prize, while Daniel Kahneman, a professor of psychology and international relations at Princeton University is the first non-economist by profession to win the prize; some critics argue that the prestige of the Prize in Economics derives in part from its association with the Nobel Prizes, an association, a source of controversy. Among them is the Swedish human rights lawyer Peter Nobel, a great-grandnephew of Ludvig Nobel. Nobel criticizes the awarding institution of misusing his family's name, states that no member of the Nobel family has had the intention of establishing a prize in economics.
He explained that "Nobel despised people who cared more abo
Physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its motion, behavior through space and time, that studies the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, its main goal is to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines and, through its inclusion of astronomy the oldest. Over much of the past two millennia, chemistry and certain branches of mathematics, were a part of natural philosophy, but during the scientific revolution in the 17th century these natural sciences emerged as unique research endeavors in their own right. Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, the boundaries of physics which are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics explain the fundamental mechanisms studied by other sciences and suggest new avenues of research in academic disciplines such as mathematics and philosophy. Advances in physics enable advances in new technologies.
For example, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism and nuclear physics led directly to the development of new products that have transformed modern-day society, such as television, domestic appliances, nuclear weapons. Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. Early civilizations dating back to beyond 3000 BCE, such as the Sumerians, ancient Egyptians, the Indus Valley Civilization, had a predictive knowledge and a basic understanding of the motions of the Sun and stars; the stars and planets were worshipped, believed to represent gods. While the explanations for the observed positions of the stars were unscientific and lacking in evidence, these early observations laid the foundation for astronomy, as the stars were found to traverse great circles across the sky, which however did not explain the positions of the planets. According to Asger Aaboe, the origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, all Western efforts in the exact sciences are descended from late Babylonian astronomy.
Egyptian astronomers left monuments showing knowledge of the constellations and the motions of the celestial bodies, while Greek poet Homer wrote of various celestial objects in his Iliad and Odyssey. Natural philosophy has its origins in Greece during the Archaic period, when pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales rejected non-naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena and proclaimed that every event had a natural cause, they proposed ideas verified by reason and observation, many of their hypotheses proved successful in experiment. The Western Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, this resulted in a decline in intellectual pursuits in the western part of Europe. By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire resisted the attacks from the barbarians, continued to advance various fields of learning, including physics. In the sixth century Isidore of Miletus created an important compilation of Archimedes' works that are copied in the Archimedes Palimpsest. In sixth century Europe John Philoponus, a Byzantine scholar, questioned Aristotle's teaching of physics and noting its flaws.
He introduced the theory of impetus. Aristotle's physics was not scrutinized until John Philoponus appeared, unlike Aristotle who based his physics on verbal argument, Philoponus relied on observation. On Aristotle's physics John Philoponus wrote: “But this is erroneous, our view may be corroborated by actual observation more than by any sort of verbal argument. For if you let fall from the same height two weights of which one is many times as heavy as the other, you will see that the ratio of the times required for the motion does not depend on the ratio of the weights, but that the difference in time is a small one, and so, if the difference in the weights is not considerable, that is, of one is, let us say, double the other, there will be no difference, or else an imperceptible difference, in time, though the difference in weight is by no means negligible, with one body weighing twice as much as the other”John Philoponus' criticism of Aristotelian principles of physics served as an inspiration for Galileo Galilei ten centuries during the Scientific Revolution.
Galileo cited Philoponus in his works when arguing that Aristotelian physics was flawed. In the 1300s Jean Buridan, a teacher in the faculty of arts at the University of Paris, developed the concept of impetus, it was a step toward the modern ideas of momentum. Islamic scholarship inherited Aristotelian physics from the Greeks and during the Islamic Golden Age developed it further placing emphasis on observation and a priori reasoning, developing early forms of the scientific method; the most notable innovations were in the field of optics and vision, which came from the works of many scientists like Ibn Sahl, Al-Kindi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Farisi and Avicenna. The most notable work was The Book of Optics, written by Ibn al-Haytham, in which he conclusively disproved the ancient Greek idea about vision, but came up with a new theory. In the book, he presented a study of the phenomenon of the camera obscura (his thousand-year-old
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, values, reason and language. Such questions are posed as problems to be studied or resolved; the term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, systematic presentation. Classic philosophical questions include: Is it possible to know anything and to prove it? What is most real? Philosophers pose more practical and concrete questions such as: Is there a best way to live? Is it better to be just or unjust? Do humans have free will? "philosophy" encompassed any body of knowledge. From the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, "natural philosophy" encompassed astronomy and physics. For example, Newton's 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy became classified as a book of physics. In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize.
In the modern era, some investigations that were traditionally part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology and economics. Other investigations related to art, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy. For example, is beauty objective or subjective? Are there many scientific methods or just one? Is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy? Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of science. Traditionally, the term "philosophy" referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, natural science and politics. Newton's 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy is classified in the 2000s as a book of physics. In the first part of the first book of his Academics, Cicero introduced the division of philosophy into logic and ethics. Metaphysical philosophy was the study of existence, God, logic and other abstract objects; this division has changed.
Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences astronomy, chemistry and cosmology. Moral philosophy still includes value theory. Metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today. Colin McGinn and others claim. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, while Talbot Brewer argued that "progress" is the wrong standard by which to judge philosophical activity. In one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as "how are we to live" and "what is the nature of reality". A broad and impartial conception of philosophy finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality and life in all world civilizations. Western philosophy is the philosophical tradition of the Western world and dates to Pre-Socratic thinkers who were active in Ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE such as Thales and Pythagoras who practiced a "love of wisdom" and were termed physiologoi.
Socrates was a influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom. Western philosophy can be divided into three eras: Ancient, Medieval philosophy, Modern philosophy; the Ancient era was dominated by Greek philosophical schools which arose out of the various pupils of Socrates, such as Plato, who founded the Platonic Academy and his student Aristotle, founding the Peripatetic school, who were both influential in Western tradition. Other traditions include Cynicism, Greek Skepticism and Epicureanism. Important topics covered by the Greeks included metaphysics, the nature of the well-lived life, the possibility of knowledge and the nature of reason. With the rise of the Roman empire, Greek philosophy was increasingly discussed in Latin by Romans such as Cicero and Seneca. Medieval philosophy is the period following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and was dominated by the ris
Jöns Jacob Berzelius
Baron Jöns Jacob Berzelius, named by himself and contemporary society as Jacob Berzelius, was a Swedish chemist. Berzelius is considered, along with Robert Boyle, John Dalton, Antoine Lavoisier, to be one of the founders of modern chemistry. Berzelius began his career as a physician but his researches in physical chemistry were of lasting significance in the development of the subject, he is noted for his determination of atomic weights. In 1803 Berzelius demonstrated the power of an electrochemical cell to decompose chemicals into pairs of electrically opposite constituents. Berzelius's work with atomic weights and his theory of electrochemical dualism led to his development of a modern system of chemical formula notation that could portray the composition of any compound both qualitatively and quantitatively, his system abbreviated the Latin names of the elements with one or two letters and applied subscripts to designate the number of atoms of each element present in both the acidic and basic ingredients.
Berzelius himself isolated several new elements, including cerium and thorium. Berzelius’s interest in mineralogy fostered his analysis and preparation of new compounds of these and other elements; the mineral berzelianite was named after him. He was a strict empiricist and insisted that any new theory be consistent with the sum of chemical knowledge, he developed classical analytical techniques, investigated isomerism and catalysis, phenomena that owe their names to him. He became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1808 and served from 1818 as its principal functionary, the perpetual secretary, he is known in Sweden as "the Father of Swedish Chemistry". Berzelius Day is celebrated on 20 August in honour of him. Berzelius was born in the parish of Väversunda in Östergötland in Sweden, his father was a school teacher in his mother a homemaker. Berzelius lost both his parents at an early age. Relatives in Linköping took care of him, there he attended the school today known as Katedralskolan.
He enrolled at Uppsala University, where he learned the profession of medical doctor from 1796 to 1801. He worked as an apprentice with a physician in the Medevi mineral springs. During this time, he conducted analysis of the spring water. For his medical studies, he examined the influence of galvanic current on several diseases and graduated as M. D. in 1802. He worked as physician near Stockholm until the mine-owner Wilhelm Hisinger discovered his analytical abilities and provided him with a laboratory. Between 1808 and 1836, Berzelius worked together with Anna Sundström. In 1807, Berzelius was appointed professor in pharmacy at the Karolinska Institute. In 1808, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. At this time, the Academy had been stagnating for several years, since the era of romanticism in Sweden had led to less interest in the sciences. In 1818, Berzelius was elected the Academy's secretary and held the post until 1848. During Berzelius' tenure, he is credited with revitalising the Academy and bringing it into a second golden era.
He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822. In 1827, he became correspondent of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, in 1830 associate member. In 1837, he was elected a member of the Swedish Academy, on chair number 5. Not long after arriving to Stockholm he wrote a chemistry textbook for his medical students, from which point a long and fruitful career in chemistry began. In 1813, he published an essay on the proportions of elements in compounds; the essay commenced with a general description, introduced his new symbolism, examined all the known elements, included a table of specific weights, finished with a selection of compounds written in his new formalisation. In 1818, he compiled a table of relative atomic weights, where oxygen was set to 100, which included all of the elements known at the time; this work provided evidence in favour of the atomic theory proposed by John Dalton: that inorganic chemical compounds are composed of atoms combined in whole number amounts.
In discovering that atomic weights are not integer multiples of the weight of hydrogen, Berzelius disproved Prout's hypothesis that elements are built up from atoms of hydrogen. Berzelius's atomic weight tables was first published in a German translation of his Textbook of Chemistry in 1826. In order to aid his experiments, he developed a system of chemical notation in which the elements were given simple written labels—such as O for oxygen, or Fe for iron—with proportions noted by numbers; this is the same system used today, the only difference being that instead of the subscript number used today, Berzelius used a superscript. Berzelius is credited with identifying the chemical elements silicon, selenium and cerium. Students working in Berzelius's laboratory discovered lithium and vanadium. Berzelius discovered silicon by repeating an experiment performed by Thénard. In the experiment, Berzelius reacted silicon tetrafluoride with potassium metal and purified its product by washing it until it became a brown powde
Social science
Social science is a category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. Social science as a whole has many branches; these social sciences include, but are not limited to: anthropology, communication studies, history, human geography, linguistics, political science, public health, sociology. The term is sometimes used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 19th century. For a more detailed list of sub-disciplines within the social sciences see: Outline of social science. Positivist social scientists use methods resembling those of the natural sciences as tools for understanding society, so define science in its stricter modern sense. Interpretivist social scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, thus treat science in its broader sense. In modern academic practice, researchers are eclectic, using multiple methodologies.
The term "social research" has acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners from various disciplines share in its aims and methods. The history of the social sciences begins in the Age of Enlightenment after 1650, which saw a revolution within natural philosophy, changing the basic framework by which individuals understood what was "scientific". Social sciences came forth from the moral philosophy of the time and were influenced by the Age of Revolutions, such as the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution; the social sciences developed from the sciences, or the systematic knowledge-bases or prescriptive practices, relating to the social improvement of a group of interacting entities. The beginnings of the social sciences in the 18th century are reflected in the grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with articles from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other pioneers; the growth of the social sciences is reflected in other specialized encyclopedias. The modern period saw "social science" first used as a distinct conceptual field.
Social science was influenced by positivism, focusing on knowledge based on actual positive sense experience and avoiding the negative. Auguste Comte used the term "science sociale" to describe the field, taken from the ideas of Charles Fourier. Following this period, there were five paths of development that sprang forth in the social sciences, influenced by Comte on other fields. One route, taken was the rise of social research. Large statistical surveys were undertaken in various parts of the United States and Europe. Another route undertaken was initiated by Émile Durkheim, studying "social facts", Vilfredo Pareto, opening metatheoretical ideas and individual theories. A third means developed, arising from the methodological dichotomy present, in which social phenomena were identified with and understood; the fourth route taken, based in economics, was developed and furthered economic knowledge as a hard science. The last path was the correlation of knowledge and social values. In this route and prescription were non-overlapping formal discussions of a subject.
Around the start of the 20th century, Enlightenment philosophy was challenged in various quarters. After the use of classical theories since the end of the scientific revolution, various fields substituted mathematics studies for experimental studies and examining equations to build a theoretical structure; the development of social science subfields became quantitative in methodology. The interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary nature of scientific inquiry into human behaviour and environmental factors affecting it, made many of the natural sciences interested in some aspects of social science methodology. Examples of boundary blurring include emerging disciplines like social research of medicine, neuropsychology and the history and sociology of science. Quantitative research and qualitative methods are being integrated in the study of human action and its implications and consequences. In the first half of the 20th century, statistics became a free-standing discipline of applied mathematics.
Statistical methods were used confidently. In the contemporary period, Karl Popper and Talcott Parsons influenced the furtherance of the social sciences. Researchers continue to search for a unified consensus on what methodology might have the power and refinement to connect a proposed "grand theory" with the various midrange theories that, with considerable success, continue to provide usable frameworks for massive, growing data banks; the social sciences will for the foreseeable future be composed of different zones in the research of, sometime distinct in approach toward, the field. The term "social science" may refer either to the specific sciences of society established by thinkers such as Comte, Durkheim and Weber, or more to all disciplines outside of "noble science" and arts. By the late 19th century, the academic social sciences were constituted of five fields: jurisprudence and amendment of the law, health and trade, art. Around the start of the 21st century, the expanding domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism.
The social science disciplines are branches of knowledge taught and researched at the college or university level. Social science disciplines are defined and rec
Natural science
Natural science is a branch of science concerned with the description and understanding of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatability of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances. Natural science can be divided into two main branches: physical science. Physical science is subdivided into branches, including physics, chemistry and earth science; these branches of natural science may be further divided into more specialized branches. In Western society's analytic tradition, the empirical sciences and natural sciences use tools from formal sciences, such as mathematics and logic, converting information about nature into measurements which can be explained as clear statements of the "laws of nature"; the social sciences use such methods, but rely more on qualitative research, so that they are sometimes called "soft science", whereas natural sciences, insofar as they emphasize quantifiable data produced and confirmed through the scientific method, are sometimes called "hard science".
Modern natural science succeeded more classical approaches to natural philosophy traced to ancient Greece. Galileo, Descartes and Newton debated the benefits of using approaches which were more mathematical and more experimental in a methodical way. Still, philosophical perspectives and presuppositions overlooked, remain necessary in natural science. Systematic data collection, including discovery science, succeeded natural history, which emerged in the 16th century by describing and classifying plants, minerals, so on. Today, "natural history" suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences. Philosophers of science have suggested a number of criteria, including Karl Popper's controversial falsifiability criterion, to help them differentiate scientific endeavors from non-scientific ones. Validity and quality control, such as peer review and repeatability of findings, are amongst the most respected criteria in the present-day global scientific community; this field encompasses a set of disciplines.
The scale of study can range from sub-component biophysics up to complex ecologies. Biology is concerned with the characteristics and behaviors of organisms, as well as how species were formed and their interactions with each other and the environment; the biological fields of botany and medicine date back to early periods of civilization, while microbiology was introduced in the 17th century with the invention of the microscope. However, it was not until the 19th century. Once scientists discovered commonalities between all living things, it was decided they were best studied as a whole; some key developments in biology were the discovery of genetics. Modern biology is divided into subdisciplines by the type of organism and by the scale being studied. Molecular biology is the study of the fundamental chemistry of life, while cellular biology is the examination of the cell. At a higher level and physiology look at the internal structures, their functions, of an organism, while ecology looks at how various organisms interrelate.
Constituting the scientific study of matter at the atomic and molecular scale, chemistry deals with collections of atoms, such as gases, molecules and metals. The composition, statistical properties and reactions of these materials are studied. Chemistry involves understanding the properties and interactions of individual atoms and molecules for use in larger-scale applications. Most chemical processes can be studied directly in a laboratory, using a series of techniques for manipulating materials, as well as an understanding of the underlying processes. Chemistry is called "the central science" because of its role in connecting the other natural sciences. Early experiments in chemistry had their roots in the system of Alchemy, a set of beliefs combining mysticism with physical experiments; the science of chemistry began to develop with the work of Robert Boyle, the discoverer of gas, Antoine Lavoisier, who developed the theory of the Conservation of mass. The discovery of the chemical elements and atomic theory began to systematize this science, researchers developed a fundamental understanding of states of matter, chemical bonds and chemical reactions.
The success of this science led to a complementary chemical industry that now plays a significant role in the world economy. Physics embodies the study of the fundamental constituents of the universe, the forces and interactions they exert on one another, the results produced by these interactions. In general, physics is regarded as the fundamental science, because all other natural sciences use and obey the principles and laws set down by the field. Physics relies on mathematics as the logical framework for formulation and quantification of principles; the study of the principles of the universe has a long history and derives from direct observation and experimentation. The formulation of theories about the governing laws of the universe has been central to the study of physics from early on, with philosophy yielding to systematic, quantitative experimental testing and observation as the source of verification. Key historical developments in physics include Isaac Newton's theory of universal g
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