Any society, starting with the family and ending with humanity as a whole, has a public consciousness. Its forms are experience, morality, religion, and so on. But, of course, one of the most important forms is science. It is she who forms new knowledge in society.
What is science?
Science is nothing more than a complex spiritual education based on a number of basic aspects. The concept, features of science and its aspects determine the whole essence of scientific knowledge. Based on the main aspects, science is considered as:
- Knowledge system. In other words, as a process for acquiring new knowledge. This aspect involves the study of epistemology - the doctrine of the knowledge of science. The basis is the subject and object of knowledge. Scientific knowledge has a result in the form of objective knowledge of the world. It is objective, because it does not depend on the state of the subject.
- A special kind of worldview. In fact, this is a product caused by the spirituality of human life, embodying creative development. From this point of view, science is classified as such important human-made products as religion, art, law, philosophy, etc. When a science develops, other areas of culture undergo changes along with it. This pattern applies in the opposite direction.
- Social Institute. In this case, we are talking about social life, in which science is perceived as a network of various institutions interconnected. Universities, libraries, academies and others are an example of such institutions. They are engaged in solving problems of a certain level and perform functions corresponding to their position. Thus, science is a clearly structured organization whose goal is to meet the needs of society.
Distinctive features of science
In order to determine the distinguishing features of science, it is necessary first of all to delve into the essence of such a concept as the criteria of scientificness. They are mainly considered in the theory of knowledge. Their study is primarily based on the desire to determine the epistemological side of scientific knowledge, endowed with unique specificity in comparison with other products of cognition. Even ancient scholars thought about finding the essential features of science through the correlation of knowledge with such forms as opinions, conjectures, assumptions, etc. In the process of development, scientists have come up with general signs of science that helped to better understand the term. Studies have identified seven major.
- The first sign of science is the integrity and consistency of scientific knowledge, which is an undoubted difference from everyday consciousness.
- The second is openness, or, in other words, incompleteness of scientific knowledge, that is, its refinement and complementarity in the process of the emergence of new facts.
- Third - includes the desire to explain the situation using facts and a logically consistent way.
- Criticality in relation to knowledge is the fourth sign of science.
- The fifth is the ability to reproduce scientific knowledge under appropriate conditions in absolutely any place and regardless of time.
- The sixth and seventh signs of science are the lack of dependence of scientific knowledge on the personal characteristics of the scientist and the presence of his own language, equipment, method, respectively.
General classification of all sciences
Answering the question on what grounds sciences are classified, B. M. Kedrov derived a general definition. In his opinion, all sciences can be divided into four classes. The first class is the philosophical sciences, which include dialectics and logic. To the second, he attributed mathematical sciences, including mathematics and mathematical logic. The third is the most extensive, since it includes immediately the technical and natural sciences, in the list of which:
- Mechanics;
- astronomy;
- astrophysics;
- physics (chemical and physical);
- chemistry;
- geochemistry;
- geography;
- geology;
- biochemistry;
- physiology;
- biology;
- anthropology.
And the final class according to Kedrov is the social sciences, which are divided into three subcategories:
- History, ethnography, archeology.
- Political economy, art history, law and art history.
- Linguistics, pedagogical sciences and psychology.
The signs of modern science are classified on a variety of grounds. The most common is the subject and method of cognition, on the basis of which the sciences of nature (natural science), society (social science) and thinking (logic) are distinguished. Engineering sciences stand out in a separate category. Of course, each of the presented groups of sciences can be further divided into subgroups.
Classification of sciences in different historical periods
For the first time, Aristotle addressed the issue of the division of sciences into classes as early as antiquity. He identified three large groups: practical, theoretical and creative. The Roman encyclopedist Mark Vorron defined the classification as a list of generalizing sciences: dialectics, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, astrology, architecture and medicine. The classification of Muslim Arab scholars was the simplest and most understandable. They distinguished two classes of sciences - Arab and foreign. The former include oratory and poetics, and the latter include mathematics, medicine, and astronomy. In the Middle Ages, scientists also sought to put forward their own version of separation. Hugo Saint-Victoria, according to his vision, identified four independent groups of sciences:
- Theoretical - physics and mathematics.
- Practical
- Mechanical - hunting, agriculture, medicine, navigation, theater.
- Logical - grammar and rhetoric.
In turn, R. Bacon introduced a classification based on cognitive abilities. The first group includes a story that describes facts, the second - theoretical sciences, the third - art, poetry and literature in the broadest sense. Rogen Bacon believed that the classification of science is necessary in four directions. Logic, grammar, ethics, metaphysics should stand separately, in independent units - mathematics, as well as natural philosophy should stand out. Mathematics, in his opinion, is the most important science of nature.
Animal Science Classification
Speaking about the criteria by which animal sciences are classified, one important feature stands out - belonging to a certain species. The classifier divides animals into vertebrates and invertebrates. Five basic sciences study vertebrates: ornithology (birds), theriology (mammals), bathrachology (amphibians), herpetology (reptiles), ichthyology (fish). There are cases when science studying primates is separately distinguished, but in most cases it is included in theriology, since primates are mammals by their nature. Invertebrates can also be divided according to what criteria animal sciences are classified. Protozoology studies simple organisms, arthropods study arthropods, malacology knows everything about mollusks, and entomology can tell about all the features of insect life. But there is a science that combines all these areas - zoology, which studies all animals.
Semiotics as one of the most important sciences
Any disease is easiest to cure at the initial stage. In order to identify it in a timely manner, it is necessary to carefully monitor the emerging symptoms. Semiotics, as a science of the signs and manifestations of the disease, deeply deals with this issue. It refers to practical medicine, which, using methods of medical research, studies the symptoms of diseases. The science of the signs of the disease is divided into general and private. The general includes a descriptive description and a complete classification of all symptoms, as well as the methods and mechanisms of their appearance by the forces of the patterns of growth of pathologies. An example of such symptoms is inflammation, dystrophy, degeneration and others. General semiotics also has their symptomatic varieties for diagnostic significance:
- pathological;
- compensatory (reflect organically and functional changes in substrates);
- pathognomonic;
- are common.
By the time of onset of symptoms are divided into early and late. In turn, private semiotics deals with the description of signs and symptoms of certain types of diseases. Any medical discipline begins a clinical study with the study of semiotics of a private form. There is also semiotics based on hereditary pathologies. In the framework of this scientific direction, hereditary diseases, their symptoms and pathologies are investigated.
Guard the order
Legal science is a system of knowledge about the state and law, the laws of their occurrence, development and work. Signs of legal science are divided into three categories. In accordance with the first, this science is called a public applied character. In the framework of this feature, it should study the needs of society, legal practice and education, as well as provide workers in this field with relevant information for the publication of new laws.
In the second, it is considered as related to the exact sciences. This is due to the fact that legal science is based on specific knowledge, which is expressed in exact proportions. It is believed that jurisprudence is most similar to medicine, since they both combine both theoretical and applied components. Just like a doctor, a lawyer is faced with solving issues related to health and life. The lawyer’s work includes carrying out preventive work to “cure” vices in the life of society and the spiritual world of each person. This manifests the humanistic features of science (in this case, jurisprudence and medicine), which originated in ancient times.
The third principle of the existence of legal science is its ability to embody the virtues of the cognitive sciences. This statement is based on the fact that jurisprudence is studying the issues of reflecting objective reality in legal aspects that arise in the process of the formation and implementation of new laws in practice. That is why forensic science, as one of the disciplines of legal science, is aimed at understanding the specific features of human thinking and applying specially acquired knowledge in the investigation process.
Who studies the past
Everyone knows that without knowing the past, it is impossible to build a future. Each person without fail will find out how his city, country and the whole world lived at different times. The well-known science takes upon itself to convey information about the past. It is she who studies the sources that have been preserved from previous periods of human life, on the basis of which it establishes the sequence of events. In fact, the main features of science and its historical method consist in following the norms and rules for working with primary sources, as well as other evidence found in the process of research work and making conclusions that allow us to write correct historical work. For the first time, these methods were applied in practice by Thucydides. It was work in accordance with historical methods that made it possible to isolate historical periods: primitiveness, the ancient world, the Middle Ages, new and then modern times. There are dozens of historical disciplines, the functioning of which allows not only to know the past, but also to structure it and convey to people. The main ones include:
- archeology - the science of finding and studying the material sources of the past;
- genealogy - the science of the relationship of people;
- chronology is the science of the time sequence of historical events.
Following Jules Verne
Popularization of science is called nothing but the dissemination of scientific knowledge among a wide range of people in an accessible format for understanding. The main task of popularizing scientists is to process specialized data from a scientific language into a listener language that is not related to science. They should also create an interesting story from dry scientific knowledge that will arouse the desire to immerse themselves in its study.
One of the main methods of popularizing science is science fiction. A huge role in the development of this direction was played by many beloved Jules Verne. It is important to understand that the more invested in the popularization of science, the greater the likelihood that young people will come to this area. Scientists are doing their best to preserve their labors and achievements and introduce the younger generation to them. But there are people in history who believe that scientific knowledge should be accessible only to people at the helm, since they, unlike the whole mass, know exactly how to use it. This opinion was shared by Tycho Brahe. Ludwig Fadeev, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that scientific knowledge, of course, is necessary to popularize (for example, every taxpayer must understand what taxation is for). But there are moments that cannot be processed absolutely precisely, and therefore information about quarks, strings, Yang-Mills fields reaches people with a small fraction of deception.
21st century science
The emergence of new scientific fields is primarily associated with the desire of each science to become more specialized. In this regard, in our century a number of new areas of scientific knowledge appeared:
- Neuroparasitology is a science that studies macroparasites, living mainly in felids, but also able to inhabit warm-blooded people.
- Quantum biology is a direction in biology in which living beings are considered from the side of quantum theory.
- Exometeorology is the science of studying the processes of nature taking place on the territory of other planets using powerful telescopes.
- Nutrigenomics is the study of the most complex reciprocal processes between food and genome expression.
- Cliodynamics is a scientific discipline that combines the complex structure of the interaction of historical macro-sociology, economic history, mathematical modeling of long-term processes of society, systematization and analysis of historical data.
- Synthetic biology is the science of designing and building new biologically active systems.
- Computational sociology is a science aimed at studying the phenomena and trends in society using computer technology for processing information.
- Recombinant memetics is a nascent scientific discipline that studies the principle of transferring ideas from one person to another, how to correct them and combine them with other memes.