{{short description|Sciences that admit of absolute precision in their results}} {{About|a branch of science|the company of the same name|Exact Sciences (company)}} [[File:Ulugh Beg's Astronomic Observatory.jpg|thumb|upright|Ulugh Beg's meridian arc for precise astronomical measurements (15th c.)]]
The '''exact sciences''' or '''quantitative sciences''', sometimes called the '''exact mathematical sciences''',<ref name = "Grant_43">{{Citation | last = Grant | first = Edward | author-link = Edward Grant | date = 2007 | title = A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century | publisher = Cambridge University Press | place = Cambridge | page = 43 | isbn = 9781139461092 }}</ref> are those sciences "which admit of absolute precision in their results"; especially the mathematical sciences.<ref>{{ Citation | title = Oxford English Dictionary, Online version | edition = 2nd | date = June 2016 | contribution = Exact, ''adj.<sup>1</sup>'' | publisher = Oxford University Press | place = Oxford }}</ref> Examples of the exact sciences are mathematics, optics, astronomy,<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Drake |first1=Stillman |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctvcj2wt5 |title=Essays on Galileo and the History and Philosophy of Science: Volume 1 |last2=Swerdlow |first2=N.M. |last3=Levere |first3=T.H. |date=1999 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-0-8020-7585-7 |jstor=10.3138/j.ctvcj2wt5 }}</ref> and physics, which many philosophers from René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, and Immanuel Kant to the logical positivists took as paradigms of rational and objective knowledge.<ref>{{Citation | last = Friedman | first = Michael | author-link = Michael Friedman (philosopher) | editor-last = Earman | editor-first = John | editor-link = John Earman | date = 1992 | title = Inference, Explanation, and Other Frustrations: Essays in the Philosophy of Science | contribution = Philosophy and the Exact Sciences: Logical Positivism as a Case Study | series = Pittsburgh series in philosophy and history of science | volume = 14 | page = 84 | publisher = University of California Press | place = Berkeley and Los Angeles | isbn = 9780520075771}}</ref> These sciences have been practiced in many cultures from antiquity<ref>{{Citation | last = Neugebauer | first = Otto | author-link = Otto Neugebauer | date = 1962 | title = The Exact Sciences in Antiquity | publisher = Harper & Bros. | place = New York | edition = 2nd, reprint | series = The Science Library }}</ref><ref>{{Citation | last = Sarkar | first = Benoy Kumar | author-link = Benoy Kumar Sarkar | date = 1918 | title = Hindu Achievements in Exact Science: A Study in the History of Scientific Development | publisher = Longmans, Green and Company | isbn = 9780598626806 | place = London / New York | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=1CpRAAAAYAAJ }}</ref> to modern times.<ref>{{Citation | last1 = Harman | first1 = Peter M. | last2 = Shapiro | first2 = Alan E. | date = 2002 | title = The Investigation of Difficult Things: Essays on Newton and the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of D.T. Whiteside | publisher = Cambridge University Press | place = Cambridge | isbn = 9780521892667 }}</ref><ref>{{Citation | last = Pyenson | first = Lewis | date = 1993 | title = Cultural Imperialism and Exact Sciences Revisited | journal = Isis | volume = 84 | issue = 1 | pages = 103–108 | doi = 10.1086/356376| quote = [M]any of the exact sciences... between Claudius Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe were in a common register, whether studied in the diverse parts of the Islamic world, in India, in Christian Europe, in China, or apparently in Mesoamerica. | jstor = 235556 | bibcode = 1993Isis...84..103P | s2cid = 144588820 }}</ref> Given their ties to mathematics, the exact sciences are characterized by accurate quantitative expression, precise predictions and/or rigorous methods of testing hypotheses involving quantifiable predictions and measurements.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Shapin |first=Steven |title=The Scientific Revolution |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |year=2018 |isbn=9780226398341 |edition=2nd |location=Chicago, IL |pages=46–47 |language=}}</ref>
The distinction between the quantitative exact sciences and those sciences that deal with the causes of things is due to Aristotle, who distinguished mathematics from natural philosophy<ref>{{Cite book |last=Principe |first=Lawrence |title=The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2011 |isbn=9780199567416 |location=New York, NY |pages=27}}</ref> and considered the exact sciences to be the "more natural of the branches of mathematics."<ref name = "Grant_42">{{Citation | last = Grant | first = Edward | author-link = Edward Grant | date = 2007 | title = A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century |quote=In addition to the exclusion of medicine from natural philosophy, Aristotle also excludes the mathematical, or exact, sciences which he characterizes as "the more natural of the branches of mathematics, such as optics, harmonics and astronomy." ...the exact sciences [for Aristotle] belong neither wholly to natural philosophy nor to mathematics but are relevant to both. Because they were viewed as lying between the two disciplines, the exact sciences came to be known as ''middle sciences'' (''scientae mediae'') during the Middle Ages. | publisher = Cambridge University Press | place = Cambridge | pages = 42–43 | isbn = 9781139461092 }}</ref> Thomas Aquinas employed this distinction when he said that astronomy explains the spherical shape of the Earth<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Cormack |first=Lesley |date=1994 |title=Flat Earth or round sphere: misconceptions of the shape of the Earth and the fifteenth-century transformation of the world. |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44251730 |journal=Ecumene |volume=1 |issue=4 |page=365 |doi=10.1177/147447409400100404 |jstor=44251730 |bibcode=1994CuGeo...1..363C |url-access=subscription }}</ref> by mathematical reasoning while physics explains it by material causes.<ref>{{Citation | last = Aquinas | first = Thomas | author-link = Thomas Aquinas | title = Summa Theologica | at = Part I, Q. 1, Art. 1, Reply 2 | url = http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm#1 | access-date = 3 September 2016 | quote = For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e. abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself. }}</ref> This distinction was widely, but not universally, accepted until the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century.<ref name = "Grant_303">{{Citation | last = Grant | first = Edward | author-link = Edward Grant | date = 2007 | title = A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century | publisher = Cambridge University Press | place = Cambridge | pages = 303–305 | isbn = 9781139461092 }}</ref> Edward Grant has proposed that a fundamental change leading to the new sciences was the unification of the exact sciences and physics by Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, and others, which resulted in a quantitative investigation of the physical causes of natural phenomena.<ref name = "Grant_312">{{Citation | last = Grant | first = Edward | author-link = Edward Grant | date = 2007 | title = A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century | publisher = Cambridge University Press | place = Cambridge | pages = 303, 312–313 | isbn = 9781139461092 }}</ref>
==See also== {{Wikiquote|Exact science}} * Hard and soft science * Fundamental science * Demarcation problem
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
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Category:Formal sciences