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Formal Science
Formal science is a branch of science studying disciplines concerned with abstract structures described by formal systems, such as logic, mathematics, statistics, theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, information theory, game theory, systems theory, decision theory, and theoretical linguistics. Whereas the natural sciences and social sciences seek to characterize physical systems and social systems, respectively, using empirical methods, the formal sciences use language tools concerned with characterizing abstract structures described by formal systems. The formal sciences aid the natural and social sciences by providing information about the structures used to describe the physical world, and what inferences may be made about them. Etymology The modern usage of the term ''formal sciences'', in English-language literature, occurs at least as early as 1860, in a posthumous publication of lectures on philosophy by Sir William Hamilton wherein logic and mathema ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Branches Of Science
The branches of science, also referred to as sciences, scientific fields or scientific disciplines, are commonly divided into three major groups: * Formal sciences: the study of formal systems, such as those under the branches of logic and mathematics, which use an ''a priori'', as opposed to empirical, methodology. * Natural sciences: the study of natural phenomena (including cosmological, geological, physical, chemical, and biological factors of the universe). Natural science can be divided into two main branches: physical science and life science (or biology). * Social sciences: the study of human behavior in its social and cultural aspects. Scientific knowledge must be based on observable phenomena and must be capable of being verified by other researchers working under the same conditions. This verifiability may well vary even ''within'' a scientific discipline. Natural, social, and formal science make up the fundamental sciences, which form the basis of interdi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tools
A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates back hundreds of millennia, have been observed using tools to make other tools. Early human tools, made of such materials as stone, bone, and wood, were used for preparation of food, hunting, manufacture of weapons, and working of materials to produce clothing and useful artifacts. The development of metalworking made additional types of tools possible. Harnessing energy sources, such as animal power, wind, or steam, allowed increasingly complex tools to produce an even larger range of items, with the Industrial Revolution marking an inflection point in the use of tools. The introduction of widespread automation in the 19th and 20th centuries allowed tools to operate with minimal human supervision, further increasing the productivity of h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indian Logic
The development of Indian logic dates back to the ''anviksiki'' of Medhatithi Gautama (c. 6th century BCE); the Sanskrit grammar rules of Pāṇini (c. 5th century BCE); the Vaisheshika school's analysis of atomism (c. 6th century BCE to 2nd century BCE); the analysis of inference by Gotama (c. 6th century BC to 2nd century CE), founder of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy; and the tetralemma of Nagarjuna (c. 2nd century CE). Indian logic stands as one of the three original traditions of logic, alongside the Greek and the Chinese logic. The Indian tradition continued to develop through early to modern times, in the form of the Navya-Nyāya school of logic. Origins The Nasadiya Sukta of the ''Rigveda'' ( RV 10.129) contains ontological speculation in terms of various logical divisions that were later recast formally as the four circles of '' catuskoti'': "A", "not A", "A and 'not A'", and "not A and not not A". Medhatithi Gautama (c. 6th century BCE) founded the ''anviksik ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Mathematics
denotes a distinct kind of mathematics which was developed in Japan during the Edo period (1603–1867). The term ''wasan'', from ''wa'' ("Japanese") and ''san'' ("calculation"), was coined in the 1870s and employed to distinguish native Japanese mathematical theory from Western mathematics (洋算 ''yōsan''). In the history of mathematics, the development of ''wasan'' falls outside the Western realm. At the beginning of the Meiji period (1868–1912), Japan and its people opened themselves to the West. Japanese scholars adopted Western mathematical technique, and this led to a decline of interest in the ideas used in ''wasan''. History The Japanese mathematical schema evolved during a period when Japan's people were isolated from European influences, but instead borrowed from ancient mathematical texts written in China, including those from the Yuan dynasty and earlier. The Japanese mathematicians Yoshida Shichibei Kōyū, Imamura Chishō, and Takahara Kisshu are among the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Mathematics
Mathematics in China emerged independently by the 11th century BCE. The Chinese independently developed a real number system that includes significantly large and negative numbers, more than one numeral system ( base 2 and base 10), algebra, geometry, number theory and trigonometry. Since the Han Dynasty, as diophantine approximation being a prominent numerical method, the Chinese made substantial progress on polynomial evaluation. Algorithms like regula falsi and expressions like continued fractions are widely used and have been well-documented ever-since. They deliberately find the principal ''n''th root of positive numbers and the roots of equations. The major texts from the period, '' The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art'' and the '' Book on Numbers and Computation'' gave detailed processes for solving various mathematical problems in daily life. All procedures were computed using a counting board in both texts, and they included inverse elements as well as Eucli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematics In Medieval Islam
Mathematics during the Golden Age of Islam, especially during the 9th and 10th centuries, was built on Greek mathematics (Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius) and Indian mathematics ( Aryabhata, Brahmagupta). Important progress was made, such as full development of the decimal place-value system to include decimal fractions, the first systematised study of algebra, and advances in geometry and trigonometry. Arabic works played an important role in the transmission of mathematics to Europe during the 10th—12th centuries. Concepts Algebra The study of algebra, the name of which is derived from the Arabic word meaning completion or "reunion of broken parts", flourished during the Islamic golden age. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a Persian scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad was the founder of algebra, is along with the Greek mathematician Diophantus, known as the father of algebra. In his book '' The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Mathematics
Greek mathematics refers to mathematics texts and ideas stemming from the Archaic through the Hellenistic and Roman periods, mostly extant from the 7th century BC to the 4th century AD, around the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean. Greek mathematicians lived in cities spread over the entire Eastern Mediterranean from Italy to North Africa but were united by Greek culture and the Greek language. The word "mathematics" itself derives from the grc, , máthēma , meaning "subject of instruction". The study of mathematics for its own sake and the use of generalized mathematical theories and proofs is an important difference between Greek mathematics and those of preceding civilizations. Origins of Greek mathematics The origin of Greek mathematics is not well documented. The earliest advanced civilizations in Greece and in Europe were the Minoan and later Mycenaean civilizations, both of which flourished during the 2nd millennium BCE. While these civilizations possessed writing a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indian Mathematics
Indian mathematics emerged in the Indian subcontinent from 1200 BCE until the end of the 18th century. In the classical period of Indian mathematics (400 CE to 1200 CE), important contributions were made by scholars like Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara II, and Varāhamihira. The decimal number system in use today: "The measure of the genius of Indian civilisation, to which we owe our modern (number) system, is all the greater in that it was the only one in all history to have achieved this triumph. Some cultures succeeded, earlier than the Indian, in discovering one or at best two of the characteristics of this intellectual feat. But none of them managed to bring together into a complete and coherent system the necessary and sufficient conditions for a number-system with the same potential as our own." was first recorded in Indian mathematics. Indian mathematicians made early contributions to the study of the concept of zero as a number,: "...our decimal system, which (by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egyptian Mathematics
Ancient Egyptian mathematics is the mathematics that was developed and used in Ancient Egypt 3000 to c. , from the Old Kingdom of Egypt until roughly the beginning of Hellenistic Egypt. The ancient Egyptians utilized a numeral system for counting and solving written mathematical problems, often involving multiplication and fractions. Evidence for Egyptian mathematics is limited to a scarce amount of surviving sources written on papyrus. From these texts it is known that ancient Egyptians understood concepts of geometry, such as determining the surface area and volume of three-dimensional shapes useful for architectural engineering, and algebra, such as the false position method and quadratic equations. Overview Written evidence of the use of mathematics dates back to at least 3200 BC with the ivory labels found in Tomb U-j at Abydos. These labels appear to have been used as tags for grave goods and some are inscribed with numbers. Further evidence of the use of the base ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Babylonian Mathematics
Babylonian mathematics (also known as ''Assyro-Babylonian mathematics'') are the mathematics developed or practiced by the people of Mesopotamia, from the days of the early Sumerians to the centuries following the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. Babylonian mathematical texts are plentiful and well edited. With respect to time they fall in two distinct groups: one from the Old Babylonian period (1830–1531 BC), the other mainly Seleucid from the last three or four centuries BC. With respect to content, there is scarcely any difference between the two groups of texts. Babylonian mathematics remained constant, in character and content, for nearly two millennia. In contrast to the scarcity of sources in Egyptian mathematics, knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from some 400 clay tablets unearthed since the 1850s. Written in Cuneiform script, tablets were inscribed while the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun. The majority of recovered clay tab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics with the major subdisciplines of number theory, algebra, geometry, and mathematical analysis, analysis, respectively. There is no general consensus among mathematicians about a common definition for their academic discipline. Most mathematical activity involves the discovery of properties of mathematical object, abstract objects and the use of pure reason to proof (mathematics), prove them. These objects consist of either abstraction (mathematics), abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicsentities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. A ''proof'' consists of a succession of applications of inference rule, deductive rules to already established results. These results include previously proved theorems, axioms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Method
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific method for additional detail.) It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; the testability of hypotheses, experimental and the measurement-based statistical testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are ''principles'' of the scientific method, as distinguished from a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises. Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, the underlying process is frequentl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
