Fundamentals of Natural Sciences. "Classification of natural sciences

Natural sciences deal with matter, energy, their relationships and transformations, and objectively measurable phenomena.

In ancient times, philosophers studied this science. Later, the basis of this doctrine was developed by natural scientists of the past such as Pascal, Newton, Lomonosov, Pirogov. They developed natural science.

Natural sciences differ from the humanities in the presence of an experiment, which consists of active interaction with the object being studied.

Humanities study human activity in the field of spiritual, mental, cultural and social. There is an argument that humanitarian sciences study the student himself, in contrast to natural ones.

Basic natural knowledge

Basic natural knowledge includes:

Physical Sciences:

physics,
engineering,
about materials,
chemistry;

biology,
medicine;

geography,
ecology,
climatology,
soil science,
anthropology.

There are two other types: formal, social and human sciences.

Chemistry, biology, geosciences, astronomy, physics are part of this knowledge. There are also cross-cutting disciplines such as biophysics, which takes into account different aspects of several subjects.

Until the 17th century, these disciplines were often referred to as "natural philosophy" due to the lack of experiments and procedures used today.

Chemistry

Much of what defines modern civilization comes from advances in knowledge and technology brought about by the natural sciences of chemistry. For example, modern production in sufficient quantities of food is impossible without the Haber-Bosch process, which was developed during the First World War. This chemical process allows the creation of ammonia fertilizer from atmospheric nitrogen, rather than relying on a biologically fixed source of nitrogen, e.g. cow dung, significantly increasing soil fertility and, as a consequence, the amount of food.

Within these broad categories of chemistry there are countless fields of knowledge, many of which have important influence on daily life. Chemists improve many products, from the food we eat to the clothes we wear and the materials we use to build our homes. Chemistry helps protect our environment and seeks new sources of energy.

Biology and medicine

Thanks to advances in biology, especially in the 20th century, doctors were able to use a variety of drugs to treat many diseases that were previously highly fatal. Through research in biology and medicine, 19th century disasters such as plague and smallpox have been significantly brought under control. Infant and maternal mortality rates have fallen sharply in industrialized countries. Biological geneticists have even understood the individual code within each person.

Geoscience

The science that studies the production and practical use knowledge about the earth has allowed humanity to extract huge quantities of minerals and oil from earth's crust, for the operation of the engines of modern civilization and industry. Paleontology, the knowledge of the earth, provides a window into the distant past, even further back than humans existed. Through discoveries in geology and similar information in the natural sciences, scientists are able to better understand the history of the planet and predict changes that may occur in the future.

Astronomy and physics

In many ways, physics is the science that underlies both the natural sciences and offers some of the most surprising discoveries of the 20th century. Among the most notable of these was the discovery that matter and energy are constant and simply change from one state to another.

Physics is a natural science based on experiments, measurements and mathematical analysis with the goal of finding quantitative physical laws for everything from the nanoworld to solar systems and galaxies of the macrocosm.

Based on research through observation and experimentation, the physical laws and theories that explain the functioning of natural forces like gravity, electromagnetism or nuclear forces.The discovery of new laws of natural science of physics contributes to the existing base of theoretical knowledge and can also be used for practical applications such as the development of equipment, electronic devices, nuclear reactors, etc.

Thanks to astronomy, scientists have discovered a huge amount of information about the Universe. In previous centuries it was believed that the entire universe was simply Milky Way. A series of debates and observations in the 20th century revealed that the universe is literally millions of times larger than previously thought.

Various types of sciences

The work of philosophers and natural scientists of the past and the subsequent scientific revolution helped create the modern knowledge base.

Natural sciences are often called "hard science" due to their intensive use of objective data and quantitative methods that rely on numbers and mathematics. In contrast, social sciences such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology rely more on qualitative assessments or alphanumeric data and tend to have fewer concrete conclusions. Formal types of knowledge, including mathematics and statistics, are highly quantitative in nature and do not usually involve the study of natural phenomena or experiments.

Today actual problems The development of the humanities and natural sciences has many parameters for solving the problems of human existence and society in the world, they gave.

SUBJECT AND STRUCTURE OF NATURAL SCIENCE

The term “natural science” comes from a combination of the words of Latin origin “nature”, that is, nature, and “knowledge”. Thus, the literal interpretation of the term is knowledge about nature.

Natural science in the modern understanding - science, which is a complex of natural sciences taken in their interrelation. At the same time, nature is understood as everything that exists, the whole world in the diversity of its forms.

Natural science - a complex of sciences about nature

Natural science in the modern understanding, it is a set of natural sciences taken in their interrelation.

However this definition does not fully reflect the essence of natural science, since nature appears as a single whole. This unity is not revealed by any particular science, nor by their entire sum. Many special natural science disciplines do not exhaust in their content everything that we mean by nature: nature is deeper and richer than all existing theories.

The concept " nature"is interpreted differently.

In the broadest sense, nature means everything that exists, the whole world in the diversity of its forms. Nature in this meaning is on a par with the concepts of matter and the Universe.

The most common interpretation of the concept of “nature” is as the totality of natural conditions for the existence of human society. This interpretation characterizes the place and role of nature in the system of historically changing attitudes towards it of man and society.

In a narrower sense, nature is understood as an object of science, or more precisely, the total object of natural science.

Modern natural science is developing new approaches to understanding nature as a whole. This is expressed in ideas about the development of nature, about various forms of movement of matter and different structural levels of the organization of nature, in an expanding idea about the types of causal relationships. For example, with the creation of the theory of relativity, views on the spatio-temporal organization of natural objects have significantly changed, the development of modern cosmology enriches ideas about the direction of natural processes, the progress of ecology has led to an understanding of the deep principles of the integrity of nature as a single system

Currently, natural science refers to exact natural science, that is, knowledge about nature that is based on scientific experiment and is characterized by a developed theoretical form and mathematical design.

For the development of special sciences, a general knowledge of nature and a comprehensive understanding of its objects and phenomena are necessary. To obtain such general ideas, each historical era develops a corresponding natural-scientific picture of the world.

The structure of modern natural science

Modern natural science is a branch of science based on the reproducible empirical testing of hypotheses and the creation of theories or empirical generalizations that describe natural phenomena.

Total object of natural science- nature.

Subject of natural science– facts and natural phenomena that are perceived by our senses directly or indirectly, using instruments.

The scientist's task is to identify these facts, generalize them and create a theoretical model that includes the laws governing natural phenomena. For example, the phenomenon of gravity is a concrete fact established through experience; The law of universal gravitation is a variant of explanation of this phenomenon. At the same time, empirical facts and generalizations, once established, retain their original meaning. Laws can be changed as science progresses. Thus, the law of universal gravitation was corrected after the creation of the theory of relativity.

The basic principle of natural science is: knowledge about nature should allowempirical test. This means that the truth in science is a position that is confirmed by reproducible experience. Thus, experience is the decisive argument for the acceptance of a particular theory.

Modern natural science is a complex complex of natural sciences. It includes such sciences as biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geography, ecology, etc.

Natural sciences differ in the subject of their study. For example, the subject of studying biology is living organisms, chemistry - substances and their transformations. Astronomy studies celestial bodies, geography studies the special (geographical) shell of the Earth, ecology studies the relationships of organisms with each other and with the environment.

Each natural science is itself a complex of sciences that arose at different stages of the development of natural science. Thus, biology includes botany, zoology, microbiology, genetics, cytology and other sciences. In this case, the subject of study of botany is plants, zoology – animals, microbiology – microorganisms. Genetics studies the patterns of heredity and variability of organisms, cytology studies the living cell.

Chemistry is also divided into a number of narrower sciences, for example: organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, analytical chemistry. Geographical sciences include geology, geoscience, geomorphology, climatology, and physical geography.

The differentiation of sciences led to the identification of even smaller areas of scientific knowledge.

For example, the biological science of zoology includes ornithology, entomology, herpetology, ethology, ichthyology, etc. Ornithology is the science that studies birds, entomology - insects, herpetology - reptiles. Ethology is the science of animal behavior; ichthyology studies fish.

The field of chemistry - organic chemistry is divided into polymer chemistry, petrochemistry and other sciences. Inorganic chemistry includes, for example, the chemistry of metals, the chemistry of halogens, and coordination chemistry.

The modern trend in the development of natural science is such that, simultaneously with the differentiation of scientific knowledge, opposite processes are taking place - the connection of individual areas of knowledge, the creation of synthetic scientific disciplines. It is important that the unification of scientific disciplines occurs both within various fields of natural science and between them. Thus, in chemical science, at the intersection of organic chemistry with inorganic and biochemistry, the chemistry of organometallic compounds and bioorganic chemistry, respectively, arose. Examples of interscientific synthetic disciplines in natural science include such disciplines as physical chemistry, chemical physics, biochemistry, biophysics, and physicochemical biology.

However, the modern stage of development of natural science - integral natural science - is characterized not so much by the ongoing processes of synthesis of two or three related sciences, but by a large-scale unification of different disciplines and areas of scientific research, and the tendency towards large-scale integration of scientific knowledge is steadily increasing.

In natural science, a distinction is made between fundamental and applied sciences. Fundamental sciences - physics, chemistry, astronomy - study the basic structures of the world, and applied sciences are concerned with applying the results of fundamental research to solve both cognitive and socio-practical problems. For example, metal physics and semiconductor physics are theoretical applied disciplines, and metal science and semiconductor technology are practical applied sciences.

Thus, knowledge of the laws of nature and the construction of a picture of the world on this basis is the immediate, immediate goal of natural science. Promoting the practical use of these laws is the ultimate goal.

Natural science differs from the social and technical sciences in its subject, goals and research methodology.

At the same time, natural science is considered as a standard of scientific objectivity, since this area of knowledge reveals universally valid truths accepted by all people. For example, another large complex of sciences - social science - has always been associated with group values and interests that exist both among the scientist himself and in the subject of research. Therefore, in the methodology of social science, along with objective research methods, the experience of the event being studied and the subjective attitude towards it become of great importance.

Natural science also has significant methodological differences from the technical sciences, due to the fact that the goal of natural science is to understand nature, and the goal of technical science is to solve practical issues related to the transformation of the world.

However, it is impossible to draw a clear line between the natural, social and technical sciences at the current level of their development, since there is whole line disciplines that occupy an intermediate position or are complex. Thus, economic geography is located at the intersection of natural and social sciences, and bionics is at the intersection of natural and technical sciences. A complex discipline that includes natural, social, and technical sections is social ecology.

Thus, modern natural science is an extensive developing complex of natural sciences, characterized by simultaneous processes of scientific differentiation and the creation of synthetic disciplines and focused on integration scientific knowledge.

Natural science is the basis for the formation scientific picture of the world.

Under scientific picture world understand a holistic system of ideas about the world, its general properties and patterns that arise as a result of generalization of basic natural science theories.

The scientific picture of the world is in constant development. In the course of scientific revolutions, qualitative transformations are carried out in it, the old picture of the world is replaced by a new one. Each historical era forms its own scientific picture of the world.

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What's happened natural Sciences? Methods of natural sciences

IN modern world There are thousands of different sciences, educational disciplines, sections and other structural links. However, a special place among all is occupied by those that directly concern a person and everything that surrounds him. This is a system of natural sciences. Of course, all other disciplines are important too. But it is this group that has the most ancient origin, and therefore has special significance in people’s lives.

The answer to this question is simple. These are disciplines that study man, his health, as well as the entire environment: soil, atmosphere, Earth as a whole, space, nature, substances that make up all living and nonliving bodies, their transformations.

The study of natural sciences has been interesting to people since ancient times. How to get rid of a disease, what the body is made of from the inside, why the stars shine and what they are, as well as millions of similar questions - this is what has interested humanity since the very beginnings of its emergence. The disciplines in question provide answers to them.

Therefore, to the question of what natural sciences are, the answer is clear. These are disciplines that study nature and all living things.

There are several main groups that belong to the natural sciences:

Chemical (analytical, organic, inorganic, quantum, physical colloid chemistry, chemistry of organoelement compounds).
Biological (anatomy, physiology, botany, zoology, genetics).
Physical (physics, physical chemistry, physical and mathematical sciences).
Earth sciences (astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, astrochemistry, space biology).
Sciences about the earth's shells (hydrology, meteorology, mineralogy, paleontology, Physiography, geology).

Only the basic natural sciences are presented here. However, it should be understood that each of them has its own subsections, branches, side and subsidiary disciplines. And if you combine all of them into a single whole, you can get a whole natural complex of sciences, numbering in hundreds of units.

However, it can be divided into three large groups disciplines:

Interaction between disciplines

Of course, no discipline can exist in isolation from others. All of them are in close harmonious interaction with each other, forming a single complex. For example, knowledge of biology would be impossible without the use technical means, designed on the basis of physics.

At the same time, it is impossible to study transformations inside living beings without knowledge of chemistry, because each organism is a whole factory of reactions occurring at colossal speed.

The interconnection of the natural sciences has always been traced. Historically, the development of one of them entailed intensive growth and accumulation of knowledge in the other. As soon as new lands began to be developed, islands and land areas were discovered, zoology and botany immediately developed. After all, the new habitats were inhabited (albeit not all) by previously unknown representatives of the human race. Thus, geography and biology are closely linked together.

If we talk about astronomy and related disciplines, it is impossible not to note the fact that they developed thanks to scientific discoveries in the field of physics, chemistry. The design of the telescope largely determined the successes in this area.

There are a lot of similar examples that can be given. All of them illustrate the close relationship between all natural disciplines that make up one huge group. Below we will consider the methods of natural sciences.

Before dwelling on the research methods used by the sciences under consideration, it is necessary to identify the objects of their study. They are:

Each of these objects has its own characteristics, and to study them it is necessary to select one or another method. Among these, as a rule, the following are distinguished:

Observation is one of the simplest, most effective and ancient ways to understand the world.
Experimentation is the basis of chemical sciences and most biological and physical disciplines. Allows you to obtain the result and from it draw a conclusion about the theoretical basis.
Comparison - this method is based on the use of historically accumulated knowledge on a particular issue and comparing it with the results obtained. Based on the analysis, a conclusion is drawn about the innovation, quality and other characteristics of the object.
Analysis. This method may include mathematical modeling, systematics, generalization, effectiveness. Most often it is the final result after a number of other studies.
Measurement - used to assess the parameters of specific objects of living and inanimate nature.

There are also the latest modern methods research that is used in physics, chemistry, medicine, biochemistry and genetic engineering, genetics and other important sciences. This:

Of course, this is far from full list. There are many most various devices for work in every field of scientific knowledge. Needed for everything individual approach, which means that our own set of methods is formed, equipment and equipment are selected.

Modern problems of natural science

The main problems of natural sciences in modern stage development is a search new information, accumulation of a theoretical knowledge base in a more in-depth, rich format. Until the beginning of the 20th century main problem The disciplines in question were in opposition to the humanities.

However, today this obstacle is no longer relevant, since humanity has realized the importance of interdisciplinary integration in mastering knowledge about man, nature, space and other things.

Now the disciplines of the natural science cycle are faced with a different task: how to preserve nature and protect it from the influence of man himself and his economic activity? And the problems here are the most pressing:

acid rain;
Greenhouse effect;
ozone layer destruction;
extinction of plant and animal species;
air pollution and others.

In most cases, in response to the question “What are natural sciences?” One word immediately comes to mind - biology. This is the opinion of most people not associated with science. And this is a completely correct opinion. After all, what, if not biology, directly and very closely connects nature and man?

All disciplines that make up this science, are aimed at studying living systems, their interactions with each other and with environment. Therefore, it is quite normal that biology is considered the founder of the natural sciences.

In addition, it is also one of the most ancient. After all, people’s interest in themselves, their bodies, the surrounding plants and animals arose along with man. Genetics, medicine, botany, zoology, and anatomy are closely related to this discipline. All these branches make up biology as a whole. They give us a complete picture of nature, of man, and of all living systems and organisms.

These fundamental sciences in the development of knowledge about bodies, substances and natural phenomena are no less ancient than biology. They also developed along with the development of man, his formation in the social environment. The main objectives of these sciences are the study of all bodies of inanimate and living nature from the point of view of the processes occurring in them, their connection with the environment.

Thus, physics examines natural phenomena, mechanisms and causes of their occurrence. Chemistry is based on the knowledge of substances and their mutual transformations into each other.

This is what natural sciences are.

And finally, we list the disciplines that allow us to learn more about our home, whose name is Earth. These include:

There are about 35 different disciplines in total. Together they study our planet, its structure, properties and features, which is so necessary for human life and economic development.

Natural Sciences. What sciences are called natural?

Natural sciences are the sciences about nature, that is, about nature. Inanimate nature and its development is studied by astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry, meteorology, volcanology, seismology, oceanology, geophysics, astrophysics, geochemistry, and a number of others. Live nature is studied by biological sciences (paleontology studies extinct organisms, taxonomy studies species and their classification, arachnology studies spiders, ornithology studies birds, entomology studies insects).

The natural sciences include those that study nature and all its manifestations, that is, physics, biology, chemistry, geography, ecology, astronomy.

Opposite to the natural sciences will be the humanities, which study man, his activities, consciousness and manifestation in various fields. These include history, psychology and others.

Natural is a word that, by itself and by its presence, tells us that something should happen in nature. Well, science, of course, is the field of activity that, this whole thing, thoroughly and scrupulously studies and reveals general, but at the same time fundamental, patterns.

Modern science, being part of culture, is also not homogeneous. It is primarily divided into humanitarian and natural science branches, accordingly, the subject of their research lies in the field of social consciousness or social existence. Our discipline will examine the basic concepts developed by modern natural sciences.

Enatural sciences vary in degree of generality depending on the subject of their study. So, perhaps, mathematics has the greatest degree of generality today - the science of relationships. Everything to which the concepts can be applied: more, less, equal, not equal, belongs to the field of applicability of mathematics. Therefore, the use of mathematical methods has become an integral part of the methodology of most applied sciences.

Physics, the science of motion, has a huge degree of generality. Movement is a necessary attribute of matter. It permeates all aspects of social life and is reflected in public consciousness. Therefore, the developments created by physics turn out to be useful far beyond the traditional scope of their application.

Take, for example, the economy of a capitalist society. The movement of capital and goods plays a significant role in it. A product created by a manufacturer moves to the consumer, while its monetary equivalent moves in the opposite direction.

Physics is well aware of similar systems with high-quality transformation of motion and the presence feedback between their elements. A typical example of such a system is, for example, an oscillating circuit consisting of a capacitor, an inductor and a resistance (resistor) connected in series. Such systems are well described by mathematical equations that have two types of solutions: oscillatory, if the feedback level is high, and relaxation, if sufficient attenuation is introduced into the feedback circuit. This attenuation is determined by the amount of energy dissipated in the feedback circuit.

Capitalism at the stage of primitive accumulation, described in detail by K. Marx in his famous work “Capital,” had a significant level of feedback, which should have led to oscillatory processes in the economy. Indeed, crises of overproduction were characteristic of such capitalism. Because of the possibility of crises, capitalism was declared “decaying.”

Analysis of crises, carried out mainly in the United States, has led economists to the conclusion that an element of dispersion should be introduced into the chain of commodity-money movement.

You can disperse the goods. Such attempts were made in the United States during the so-called Great Depression. Wheat was drowned in Hudson Bay, oranges were burned in locomotive furnaces. The destruction of material assets, of course, reduces the scope of fluctuations in commodity and cash flow. However, in general it is disadvantageous to society.

The scattering of money turned out to be more successful. It is expressed as a balance of payments deficit. Simply put, the entire society begins to live in debt. As a result of this dispersion, the crises of overproduction in the modern capitalist economy disappeared.

After the Arab oil countries, which were not covered by the mechanism of dissipation of the commodity-money supply, entered the arena, the capitalist world was in a fever again. However, diplomatic efforts and international economic sanctions made it possible to bring the economies of these countries into general scheme payment deficit. After this, comparative stability returned to the capitalist world.

The next most general subject is chemistry - the science of the structure of matter and its transformation. It is served by physics and mathematics as auxiliary tools. Chemistry has a clearly defined and very broad field of application.

The scope of biology is even more limited, but of course no less important. This is the science of living things. Its understanding requires deep knowledge in the fields of mathematics, physics, and chemistry. To understand the depth of the problems facing biology, think in your spare time about how living things differ from non-living things.

Chemistry and biology are remarkable in that they have developed and developed the concept of classification. In addition to chemistry and biology, it is widely used in computational mathematics and is of undoubted interest for students of economics.

In addition to the listed fundamental natural sciences, there are also a large number of applied sciences. For example, geology and geography are the sciences about the Earth and its structure. Anatomy and physiology study biological features person. Today, the so-called frontier scientific disciplines are very popular. As they used to say: “Disciplines arising at the intersection of sciences.” These are biophysics, biochemistry, physical chemistry, mathematical physics, etc. A special role among them is played by modern ecology- science designed to solve global problems environmental problem, created by humanity literally in recent decades.

At the end of the last century, Earth was a largely agricultural planet with a relatively small number of cities and a low level of industrial production. Agriculture was practically waste-free. For example, go to a modern village (I don’t mean holiday villages). You usually won't find landfills there. Items included in peasant household use are recycled almost completely and without any residue.

A completely different picture is observed in cities. Humanity has come to the point at which it can be crushed by the waste of its own vital activity, primarily household garbage and waste from modern chemical and processing industries. The general tendency for so-called developed countries to push out hazardous industries to underdeveloped countries (including Russia) does not save the situation. A solution can only be found through the united efforts of all humanity.

System of natural science knowledge

Natural science is one of the components of the system of modern scientific knowledge, which also includes complexes of technical and human sciences. Natural science is an evolving system of ordered information about the laws of motion of matter.

The objects of research are individual natural sciences, the totality of which at the beginning of the 20th century. was called natural history, from the time of their inception to the present day there have been and remain: matter, life, man, the Earth, the Universe. Accordingly, modern natural science groups the basic natural sciences as follows:

physics, chemistry, physical chemistry;
biology, botany, zoology;
anatomy, physiology, genetics (the study of heredity);
geology, mineralogy, paleontology, meteorology, physical geography;
astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics, astrochemistry.

Of course, only the main natural ones are listed here, but in fact modern natural science is a complex and branched complex that includes hundreds of scientific disciplines. Physics alone unites a whole family of sciences (mechanics, thermodynamics, optics, electrodynamics, etc.). As the volume of scientific knowledge grew, certain branches of science acquired the status of scientific disciplines with their own conceptual apparatus and specific research methods, which often makes them difficult to access for specialists involved in other branches of the same, say, physics.

Such differentiation in the natural sciences (as, indeed, in science in general) is a natural and inevitable consequence of increasingly narrowing specialization.

At the same time, counter processes also naturally occur in the development of science, in particular, natural science disciplines are formed and formed, as they often say, “at the intersections” of sciences: chemical physics, biochemistry, biophysics, biogeochemistry and many others. As a result, the boundaries that were once defined between individual scientific disciplines and their sections become very conditional, flexible and, one might say, transparent.

These processes, leading, on the one hand, to a further increase in the number of scientific disciplines, but on the other hand, to their convergence and interpenetration, are one of the evidence of the integration of natural sciences, reflecting the general trend in modern science.

It is here, perhaps, that it is appropriate to turn to such a scientific discipline, which undoubtedly occupies a special place, as mathematics, which is a research tool and a universal language not only of the natural sciences, but also of many others - those in which quantitative patterns can be discerned.

Depending on the methods underlying the research, we can talk about natural sciences:

descriptive (examining evidence and connections between them);
precise (building mathematical models to express established facts and connections, i.e. patterns);
applied (using systematics and models of descriptive and exact natural sciences to master and transform nature).

However, a common generic feature of all sciences that study nature and technology is the conscious activity of professional scientists aimed at describing, explaining and predicting the behavior of the objects under study and the nature of the phenomena being studied. The humanities differ in that the explanation and prediction of phenomena (events) is based, as a rule, not on an explanation, but on an understanding of reality.

This is fundamental difference between sciences that have objects of research that allow systematic observation, repeated experimental testing and reproducible experiments, and sciences that study essentially unique, non-repeating situations that, as a rule, do not allow exact repetition of experience or conducting any experiment more than once.

Modern culture strives to overcome the differentiation of knowledge into many independent directions and disciplines, primarily the split between the natural and human sciences, which clearly emerged at the end of the 19th century. After all, the world is one in all its infinite diversity, therefore relatively independent areas a unified system of human knowledge are organically interconnected; the difference here is transitory, the unity is absolute.

Nowadays, the integration of natural science knowledge has clearly emerged, which manifests itself in many forms and is becoming the most pronounced trend in its development. This trend is increasingly manifested in the interaction of the natural sciences with the humanities. Evidence of this is the advancement to the front line modern science the principles of systematicity, self-organization and global evolutionism, which open up the possibility of combining a wide variety of scientific knowledge into an integral and consistent system, united by the general laws of the evolution of objects of various natures.

There is every reason to believe that we are witnessing an increasing rapprochement and mutual integration of the natural and human sciences. This is confirmed by the widespread use in humanities research of not only technical means and information technologies used in the natural and technical sciences, but also general scientific methods research developed in the process of development of natural science.

The subject of this course is concepts related to the forms of existence and movement of living and inanimate matter, while the laws that determine the course of social phenomena are the subject of the humanities. It should, however, be borne in mind that, no matter how different the natural and human sciences are from each other, they have a general unity, which is the logic of science. It is submission to this logic that makes science a sphere human activity aimed at identifying and theoretically systematizing objective knowledge about reality.

The natural scientific picture of the world is created and modified by scientists of different nationalities, including convinced atheists and believers of various faiths and denominations. However, in its professional activity they all proceed from the fact that the world is material, that is, it exists objectively regardless of the people who study it. Let us note, however, that the process of cognition itself can influence the objects of the material world being studied and how a person imagines them, depending on the level of development of research tools. In addition, every scientist proceeds from the fact that the world is fundamentally knowable.

Process scientific knowledge is a search for truth. However, absolute truth in science is incomprehensible, and with every step along the path of knowledge it moves further and deeper. Thus, at each stage of knowledge, scientists establish relative truth, understanding that next stage more accurate knowledge will be achieved, more adequate to reality. And this is another evidence that the process of cognition is objective and inexhaustible.