Nautral Science

The natural sciences, especially physics, are often referred to as “hard science” because of the heavy use of objective data and quantitative methods. In contrast, the social sciences rely more on qualitative evaluations and thus tend to have less certain conclusions. The study of human beings in the social science is hampered both by the complexity of humans and the increased tendency towards unscientific bias when studying humans as opposed to, say, rocks.

Much of what defines our modern civilization are advances in knowledge and technology caused by investigations in the natural sciences. For instance, the production of most if not all of the food you eat can be traced back to a chemical process called the Haber-Bosch process which was developed during WWI. This chemical process allows the creation of fertilizer nitrates from atmospheric nitrogen, rather than relying on biologically fixed sources of nitrogen such as cow dung or bat guano.

Thanks to developments in biology, especially accelerating in the last half-century, we have advanced medicines capable of curing or treating many diseases that were otherwise fatal. The scourges of the 19th century and before, such as plague and smallpox, are now largely under control or eliminated thanks to biology research. The biological subfield of genetics has allowed us to understand the very code of life itself, and recognize the way it expresses itself within each of us.

Advances in earth science have allowed us to extract huge amounts of minerals and petroleum from the Earth’s crust, powering the engines of modern civilization and industry to the present day. Paleontology, a subfield of Earth science, has given us a window into the Earth’s distant past, long before humans ever existed. This helps us trace the reasons why the spectrum of life and the geology of Earth is the way it is today.

Some of the most fascinating of the natural sciences are physics and astronomy, the most quantitative fields in all of...