Understanding Formal, Empirical, and Applied Sciences

Formal and Empirical Scientific Knowledge

Formal scientific knowledge is that which occurs in science and mathematics. Here, we consider the formal aspects without reference to its content.

Experimental scientific knowledge is that which occurs in the natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, etc.

Historical Development of the Concept of Science

Philosophy once took care of all knowledge, and all knowledge was philosophy. To know was to understand the causes. Philosophers thought that by discovering the essence of a thing, they would know its properties and behaviors. As experience says nothing about these essences, these thinkers were limited to natural observation. From the seventeenth century, the concept of science changed. Galileo set out the principles of mechanization in the early seventeenth century. Chemistry appeared with Lavoisier in the late eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, a new knowledge that is subject to mathematization appeared.

Scientific Methods

Method means "path". There are two types of methods:

• Heuristics: We spend time searching for and discovering the truth as a process.
• Teaching: This is to convey a truth already found.

Basic and Applied Science

Basic Science: Studies born of curiosity and the desire of humans to understand themselves and the world.

Applied science is founded on the basic and uses its knowledge to enhance and exploit a field. Its purpose is more limited and practical. Its aim is to understand the world in order to transform it.

Technique: This means the transformation of the real into something useful. The technique itself is based on applied science and/or basic science.

Formal and Empirical Sciences

Formal sciences are content to do without having a conceptual and abstract nature. Their goal is knowledge of structures and relations. Deduction has value and lends itself to the use of symbols.

Empirical sciences deal with facts or actual entities. Induction and analysis play a major role. These are divided into:

• Natural Sciences: Their aim is nature in its various areas or fields. They do not tell a story.
• Human Sciences: The target audience is the spiritual aspects of life and its objectification. Humans, with their rational capacity and freedom, create and perfect nature in their own way. Their method is description, analysis, understanding, and intuition.