General

Factual Sciences

The factual or factual sciences are those that deal with the factual (de factum, the Latin word for “facts”) or tangible verification of their hypotheses and premises, based on observation and experimentation, that is, the reproduction of a series of conditions to obtain a predictable result.

For this reason, they depend on empirical content that must be confirmed through experience: such verifiability is key to distinguishing them from other sciences.

They are distinguished from the formal or pure sciences (such as logic and mathematics) in that they pay more attention to procedures (forms) than to contents (facts).

Furthermore, the factual sciences use the scientific method for their investigations, while the formal sciences use the logical inductive method.

In turn, the factual sciences are divided into natural sciences (those that deal with the relationships existing in the universe and that do not include the intervention of man) and social sciences (devoted to the study of the relationships that govern the world of beings humans).

See also: Examples of Natural Sciences in everyday life

Examples of factual sciences

  1. Biology, in charge of the study of life in its various variants and possibilities, which encompasses all kinds of living beings, from bacteria and forms of protozoa to higher animals, including humans.
  2. Physics, in charge of studying the laws of operation of nature, in its various variables and possibilities, from applied physics to astrophysics.
  3. Chemistry, whose object of study is the constitution and transformation of matter in its various levels and reactions.
  4. Psychology, in charge of studying the internal working mechanisms of the human mind: its constitutive and evolutionary processes, its possible structures, etc.
  5. Social Psychology, which studies the way in which the human psyche structures its forms of collectivity and relations of influence and emotional, symbolic, and affective reciprocity.
  6. Sociology, interested in the study of human groups and collectives, or of human society as a whole: its processes of formation and its internal struggles, always within the historical-social context in which they are inserted.
  7. Economics, science devoted to the understanding of the processes of wealth generation, production, distribution, and consumption of goods in human society, whether in the framework of the forms of trade of a country or a certain region or as a whole, in which case it is called an economic theory.
  8. The Political Sciences, also called Politology or Political Theory, make political work and its various aspects and formations the subject of its main interest. That includes the systems of government, the forms and social behaviors around power, and the various possible regimes of human organization.
  9. Sexology, whose specific focus is the anatomical (biological) and cultural study of the sexual behaviors and practices of human beings.
  10. Geology, devoted to the study of the composition and internal structure of the Earth, as well as the evolutionary processes that have constituted it throughout geological time. It comprises a compendium of geosciences that undertake the revision of plate tectonics, as well as planetary geology of astrogeology.
  11. Law, also called Laws or Legal Sciences, includes the study of the constitution of the normative and institutional order of the apparatus of human jurisprudence, that is, of the legislative constructions that allow solving human conflicts in a fair, consensual and equitable manner. I also study the historical composition of the different legal regimes, as well as the underlying philosophy and the relationships between them.
  12. History, a discipline whose object of study is the past of the human species and whose method is characteristic of the so-called social sciences. There is a discussion regarding whether History is a Social Science or a Humanistic Science, but the most current trends prefer to include it in the first set of disciplines.
  13. Anthropology, understood as the science that studies the human being from an integral perspective, using for it a combination of tools and knowledge of the various natural and social sciences, trying to cover both the biological evolution of our species, as well as its ways of life and the various cultural and linguistic expressions that characterize it in its complexity.
  14. Human Geography in charge of the study of human societies from a spatial perspective, that is, emphasizing the relationship between societies and their physical means of development. Thus, various cultural landscapes and human regions are established, which contribute to the spatial diagnosis of our presence on the planet.
  15. Paleontology a natural science whose study regime includes the interpretation of the different fossil records, based on methods and foundations closely shared with biology and geology, sister disciplines.
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