Fundamental science (pure science) is science that describes the most basic objects and forces as well as the relations among them and laws governing them. Other phenomena may in principle be thought to be derived from the processes studied in fundamental science, following the logic of scientific reductionism. Biology, chemistry, and physics are fundamental sciences; engineering is not. There is a difference between fundamental science and applied science (or practical science). Fundamental science, in contrast to applied science, may have no immediate practical use. Progress in fundamental science is based on controlled experiments and careful observation although these methods do not distinguish fundamental science from applied science; progress in applied science equally depends upon controlled experiments and careful observation. Fundamental science is dependent upon deductions from well-established findings and valued theories. Fundamental science has traditionally been associated with the physical and natural sciences; some research in the social and behavioral sciences, however, can also be deemed fundamental (e.g., cognitive neuroscience, personality).
Famous quotes containing the words fundamental and/or science:
“Le Corbusier was the sort of relentlessly rational intellectual that only France loves wholeheartedly, the logician who flies higher and higher in ever-decreasing circles until, with one last, utterly inevitable induction, he disappears up his own fundamental aperture and emerges in the fourth dimension as a needle-thin umber bird.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)
“The science hangs like a gathering fog in a valley, a fog which begins nowhere and goes nowhere, an incidental, unmeaning inconvenience to passers-by.”
—H.G. (Herbert George)