Formal sciences are disciplines concerned with formal systems, such as logic, mathematics, statistics, theoretical computer science, information theory, game theory, systems theory, decision theory, and portions of linguistics.
Whereas natural sciences and other sciences like social sciences, behavioral sciences, and cognitive science seek soundness of scientific theory with respect to observations in order to successfully predict and perhaps accurately explain phenomena in the external world, the formal sciences are concerned with the internal properties of formal systems, especially definitions of terms and rules governing inferences.
Formal sciences sometimes aid constructing, assessing, and testing scientific theories and scientific models, however, by revealing inconsistencies or invalid forms of inference.
Read more about Formal Sciences: History, Differences From Other Forms of Science
Famous quotes containing the words formal and/or sciences:
“On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provision for discourse.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“All cultural change reduces itself to a difference of categories. All revolutions, whether in the sciences or world history, occur merely because spirit has changed its categories in order to understand and examine what belongs to it, in order to possess and grasp itself in a truer, deeper, more intimate and unified manner.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)