The cult of domesticity was a social ideology that, above all, characterized women as subservient to men. It emphasized an ideal woman who was tender and self-sacrificing, a caregiver who provided a nest for her children and a peaceful refuge for her husband. Woman as cupbearer, homemaker, essentially.
xam idea book for class 9 social science free 53
This ideology eventually influenced the ratification of many social customs that restricted women to merely caring for the house. Additionally, and perhaps more holistically, it created a field for middle class women to work as domestic servants.
Perhaps the most influential economic theory to arise from the Gilded Age, laissez-faire economics emphasized a free market that would produce the best and most efficient solutions to economic and social problems on its own, without much government intervention. Simply put, laissez-faire ideology allowed businesses to do what they wanted without much regulation. They could trade freely, establish their own price values, and determine worker wages and conditions.
The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived "natural philosophy",[9][10] which was later transformed by the Scientific Revolution that began in the 16th century[11] as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions.[12][13] The scientific method soon played a greater role in knowledge creation and it was not until the 19th century that many of the institutional and professional features of science began to take shape,[14][15] along with the changing of "natural philosophy" to "natural science".[16]
Modern science is typically divided into three major branches:[17] natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics), which study the physical world; the social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, and sociology), which study individuals and societies;[18][19] and the formal sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science), which study formal systems, governed by axioms and rules.[20][21] There is disagreement whether the formal sciences are science disciplines,[22][23][24] because they do not rely on empirical evidence.[25][23] Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as in engineering and medicine.[26][27][28]
The printing press was widely used to publish scholarly arguments, including some that disagreed widely with contemporary ideas of nature.[87] Francis Bacon and René Descartes published philosophical arguments in favor of a new type of non-Aristotelian science. Bacon emphasized the importance of experiment over contemplation, questioned the Aristotelian concepts of formal and final cause, promoted the idea that science should study the laws of nature and the improvement of all human life.[88] Descartes emphasized individual thought and argued that mathematics rather than geometry should be used to study nature.[89]
During this time, the declared purpose and value of science became producing wealth and inventions that would improve human lives, in the materialistic sense of having more food, clothing, and other things. In Bacon's words, "the real and legitimate goal of sciences is the endowment of human life with new inventions and riches", and he discouraged scientists from pursuing intangible philosophical or spiritual ideas, which he believed contributed little to human happiness beyond "the fume of subtle, sublime or pleasing [speculation]".[92]
Early in the 19th century, John Dalton suggested the modern atomic theory, based on Democritus's original idea of indivisible particles called atoms.[109] The laws of conservation of energy, conservation of momentum and conservation of mass suggested a highly stable universe where there could be little loss of resources. However, with the advent of the steam engine and the industrial revolution there was an increased understanding that not all forms of energy have the same energy qualities, the ease of conversion to useful work or to another form of energy.[110] This realization led to the development of the laws of thermodynamics, in which the free energy of the universe is seen as constantly declining: the entropy of a closed universe increases over time.[a]
The century saw fundamental changes within science disciplines. Evolution became a unified theory in the early 20th-century when the modern synthesis reconciled Darwinian evolution with classical genetics.[126] Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and the development of quantum mechanics complement classical mechanics to describe physics in extreme length, time and gravity.[127][128] Widespread use of integrated circuits in the last quarter of the 20th century combined with communications satellites led to a revolution in information technology and the rise of the global internet and mobile computing, including smartphones. The need for mass systematization of long, intertwined causal chains and large amounts of data led to the rise of the fields of systems theory and computer-assisted scientific modeling.[129]
Modern science is commonly divided into three major branches: natural science, social science, and formal science.[17] Each of these branches comprises various specialized yet overlapping scientific disciplines that often possess their own nomenclature and expertise.[136] Both natural and social sciences are empirical sciences,[137] as their knowledge is based on empirical observations and is capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers working under the same conditions.[138]
Natural science is the study of the physical world. It can be divided into two main branches: life science and physical science. These two branches may be further divided into more specialized disciplines. For example, physical science can be subdivided into physics, chemistry, astronomy, and earth science. Modern natural science is the successor to the natural philosophy that began in Ancient Greece. Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and Newton debated the benefits of using approaches which were more mathematical and more experimental in a methodical way. Still, philosophical perspectives, conjectures, and presuppositions, often overlooked, remain necessary in natural science.[139] Systematic data collection, including discovery science, succeeded natural history, which emerged in the 16th century by describing and classifying plants, animals, minerals, and so on.[140] Today, "natural history" suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences.[141]
Social science is the study of human behavior and functioning of societies.[18][19] It has many disciplines that include, but are not limited to anthropology, economics, history, human geography, political science, psychology, and sociology.[18] In the social sciences, there are many competing theoretical perspectives, many of which are extended through competing research programs such as the functionalists, conflict theorists, and interactionists in sociology.[18] Due to the limitations of conducting controlled experiments involving large groups of individuals or complex situations, social scientists may adopt other research methods such as the historical method, case studies, and cross-cultural studies. Moreover, if quantitative information is available, social scientists may rely on statistical approaches to better understand social relationships and processes.[18]
Formal science is an area of study that generates knowledge using formal systems.[142][20][21] A formal system is an abstract structure used for inferring theorems from axioms according to a set of rules.[143] It includes mathematics,[144][145] systems theory, and theoretical computer science. The formal sciences share similarities with the other two branches by relying on objective, careful, and systematic study of an area of knowledge. They are, however, different from the empirical sciences as they rely exclusively on deductive reasoning, without the need for empirical evidence, to verify their abstract concepts.[25][146][138] The formal sciences are therefore a priori disciplines and because of this, there is disagreement on whether they constitute a science.[22][147] Nevertheless, the formal sciences play an important role in the empirical sciences. Calculus, for example, was initially invented to understand motion in physics.[148] Natural and social sciences that rely heavily on mathematical applications include mathematical physics,[149] chemistry,[150] biology,[151] finance,[152] and economics.[153]
Computational science applies computing power to simulate real-world situations, enabling a better understanding of scientific problems than formal mathematics alone can achieve. The use of machine learning and artificial intelligence is becoming a central feature of computational contributions to science for example in agent-based computational economics, random forests, topic modeling and various forms of prediction. However, machines alone rarely advance knowledge as they require human guidance and capacity to reason; and they can introduce bias against certain social groups or sometimes underperform against humans.[161][162]
The replication crisis is an ongoing methodological crisis that affects parts of the social and life sciences. In subsequent investigations, the results of many scientific studies are proven to be unrepeatable.[185] The crisis has long-standing roots; the phrase was coined in the early 2010s[186] as part of a growing awareness of the problem. The replication crisis represents an important body of research in metascience, which aims to improve the quality of all scientific research while reducing waste.[187]
There can also be an element of political or ideological bias on all sides of scientific debates. Sometimes, research may be characterized as "bad science," research that may be well-intended but is incorrect, obsolete, incomplete, or over-simplified expositions of scientific ideas. The term "scientific misconduct" refers to situations such as where researchers have intentionally misrepresented their published data or have purposely given credit for a discovery to the wrong person.[192] 2ff7e9595c
Comments