22-08-2017, 01:04 PM
Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that constructs and organizes knowledge in the form of verifiable explanations and predictions about the universe. Contemporary science is usually subdivided into the natural sciences, which study the material universe; The social sciences, which study people and societies; And the formal sciences, which study logic and mathematics. Formal sciences are often excluded, as they are not dependent on empirical observations. The disciplines that use science, such as engineering and medicine, can also be considered as applied sciences.
From classical antiquity to the nineteenth century, science as a type of knowledge was more closely linked to the philosophy of what it is now, and in the Western world the term "natural philosophy" encompassed fields of study that today are associated with science , Astronomy, medicine and physics. However, during the Golden Age Islamic foundations for the scientific method were established by Ibn al-Haytham in his optics book. While the classification of the material world by the ancient Indians and Greeks in the air, land, fire and water was more philosophical, medieval Middle East used practical and experimental observation to classify materials.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of physical laws. Throughout the nineteenth century, the word "science" was increasingly associated with the scientific method itself as a disciplined way of studying the natural world. It was during this time that scientific disciplines like biology, chemistry and physics reached their modern forms. The same period also included the origin of the terms "scientific" and "scientific community", the founding of scientific institutions and the increasing importance of their interactions with society and other aspects of culture.
