Theoretical computer science is a subfield of computer science and mathematics that focuses on the abstract and mathematical foundations of computation .
117-715: The Radcliffe Science Library ( RSL ) is the main teaching and research science library at the University of Oxford in Oxford , England . Being officially part of the Bodleian Libraries , the library holds the Legal Deposit material for the sciences and is thus entitled to receive a copy of all British scientific publications. Since 2023 the library has shared its buildings with Reuben College . The physician John Radcliffe died in 1714, leaving money in his will to establish
234-399: A user interface for the input/output of mathematical expressions, a large set of routines to perform usual operations, like simplification of expressions, differentiation using chain rule , polynomial factorization , indefinite integration , etc. Very-large-scale integration ( VLSI ) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining thousands of transistors into
351-538: A century before, were first observed . In 2019, the international collaboration Event Horizon Telescope presented the first direct image of a black hole 's accretion disc . Modern science is commonly divided into three major branches : natural science , social science , and formal science . Each of these branches comprises various specialised yet overlapping scientific disciplines that often possess their own nomenclature and expertise. Both natural and social sciences are empirical sciences , as their knowledge
468-474: A discipline. Ideas on human nature, society, and economics evolved during the Enlightenment. Hume and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed A Treatise of Human Nature , which was expressed historically in works by authors including James Burnett , Adam Ferguson , John Millar and William Robertson , all of whom merged a scientific study of how humans behaved in ancient and primitive cultures with
585-696: A distributed system is called a distributed program , and distributed programming is the process of writing such programs. There are many alternatives for the message passing mechanism, including RPC-like connectors and message queues . An important goal and challenge of distributed systems is location transparency . Information-based complexity (IBC) studies optimal algorithms and computational complexity for continuous problems. IBC has studied continuous problems as path integration, partial differential equations, systems of ordinary differential equations, nonlinear equations, integral equations, fixed points, and very-high-dimensional integration. Formal methods are
702-411: A few of their scientific predecessors – Galileo , Kepler , Boyle , and Newton principally – as the guides to every physical and social field of the day. The 18th century saw significant advancements in the practice of medicine and physics; the development of biological taxonomy by Carl Linnaeus ; a new understanding of magnetism and electricity; and the maturation of chemistry as
819-423: 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, along with the changing of "natural philosophy" to "natural science". New knowledge in science is advanced by research from scientists who are motivated by curiosity about the world and a desire to solve problems. Contemporary scientific research
936-466: 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. This realisation led to the development of the laws of thermodynamics , in which
1053-455: A hypothesis proves unsatisfactory it is modified or discarded. If the hypothesis survives testing, it may become adopted into the framework of a scientific theory , a validly reasoned , self-consistent model or framework for describing the behaviour of certain natural events. A theory typically describes the behaviour of much broader sets of observations than a hypothesis; commonly, a large number of hypotheses can be logically bound together by
1170-410: A landmark result in computational complexity theory . Modern theoretical computer science research is based on these basic developments, but includes many other mathematical and interdisciplinary problems that have been posed, as shown below: An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure for calculations. Algorithms are used for calculation , data processing , and automated reasoning . An algorithm
1287-537: A means to manage large amounts of data efficiently for uses such as large databases and internet indexing services . Usually, efficient data structures are key to designing efficient algorithms . Some formal design methods and programming languages emphasize data structures, rather than algorithms, as the key organizing factor in software design. Storing and retrieving can be carried out on data stored in both main memory and in secondary memory . Distributed computing studies distributed systems. A distributed system
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#17328442994111404-407: A new non- teleological way. This implied a shift in the view of objects: objects were now considered as having no innate goals. Leibniz assumed that different types of things all work according to the same general laws of nature, with no special formal or final causes. During this time the declared purpose and value of science became producing wealth and inventions that would improve human lives, in
1521-427: A particular kind of mathematics based techniques for the specification , development and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the expectation that, as in other engineering disciplines, performing appropriate mathematical analysis can contribute to the reliability and robustness of a design. Formal methods are best described as
1638-458: A preference for one outcome over another. Eliminating the bias can be achieved through transparency, careful experimental design , and a thorough peer review process of the experimental results and conclusions. After the results of an experiment are announced or published, it is normal practice for independent researchers to double-check how the research was performed, and to follow up by performing similar experiments to determine how dependable
1755-456: A priori disciplines and because of this, there is disagreement on whether they constitute a science. Nevertheless, the formal sciences play an important role in the empirical sciences. Calculus , for example, was initially invented to understand motion in physics. Natural and social sciences that rely heavily on mathematical applications include mathematical physics , chemistry , biology , finance , and economics . Applied science
1872-400: A revolution in information technology and the rise of the global internet and mobile computing , including smartphones . The need for mass systematisation of long, intertwined causal chains and large amounts of data led to the rise of the fields of systems theory and computer-assisted scientific modelling . The Human Genome Project was completed in 2003 by identifying and mapping all of
1989-457: A separate discipline from philosophy when Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory for psychological research in 1879. During the mid-19th century Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1858, which explained how different plants and animals originated and evolved. Their theory was set out in detail in Darwin's book On
2106-592: A separate field because they rely on deductive reasoning instead of the scientific method or empirical evidence as their main methodology. Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine . The history of science spans the majority of the historical record, with the earliest written records of identifiable predecessors to modern science dating to Bronze Age Egypt and Mesopotamia from around 3000 to 1200 BCE . Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy , and medicine entered and shaped
2223-475: A set of basic assumptions that are needed to justify the scientific method: there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers; this objective reality is governed by natural laws ; these laws were discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation. Mathematics is essential in the formation of hypotheses , theories , and laws, because it is used extensively in quantitative modelling, observing, and collecting measurements . Statistics
2340-463: A set of rules. It includes mathematics, 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. The formal sciences are therefore
2457-478: A single theory. Thus, a theory is a hypothesis explaining various other hypotheses. In that vein, theories are formulated according to most of the same scientific principles as hypotheses. Scientists may generate a model , an attempt to describe or depict an observation in terms of a logical, physical or mathematical representation, and to generate new hypotheses that can be tested by experimentation. While performing experiments to test hypotheses, scientists may have
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#17328442994112574-403: A specific programming language, showing the computation involved. In such a case that the evaluation would be of syntactically illegal strings, the result would be non-computation. Semantics describes the processes a computer follows when executing a program in that specific language. This can be shown by describing the relationship between the input and output of a program, or an explanation of how
2691-429: A strong awareness of the determining forces of modernity . Modern sociology largely originated from this movement. In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations , which is often considered the first work on modern economics. During the nineteenth century many distinguishing characteristics of contemporary modern science began to take shape. These included the transformation of the life and physical sciences;
2808-437: A type of inductive learning called supervised learning. In supervised learning, an algorithm is given samples that are labeled in some useful way. For example, the samples might be descriptions of mushrooms, and the labels could be whether or not the mushrooms are edible. The algorithm takes these previously labeled samples and uses them to induce a classifier. This classifier is a function that assigns labels to samples including
2925-438: A unified theory in the early 20th-century when the modern synthesis reconciled Darwinian evolution with classical genetics . Albert Einstein 's theory of relativity and the development of quantum mechanics complement classical mechanics to describe physics in extreme length , time and gravity . Widespread use of integrated circuits in the last quarter of the 20th century combined with communications satellites led to
3042-503: Is a scientific discipline that deals with the construction and study of algorithms that can learn from data. Such algorithms operate by building a model based on inputs and using that to make predictions or decisions, rather than following only explicitly programmed instructions. Machine learning can be considered a subfield of computer science and statistics . It has strong ties to artificial intelligence and optimization , which deliver methods, theory and application domains to
3159-1002: Is a branch of computer science devoted to the study of algorithms that can be stated in terms of geometry . Some purely geometrical problems arise out of the study of computational geometric algorithms, and such problems are also considered to be part of computational geometry. The main impetus for the development of computational geometry as a discipline was progress in computer graphics and computer-aided design and manufacturing ( CAD / CAM ), but many problems in computational geometry are classical in nature, and may come from mathematical visualization . Other important applications of computational geometry include robotics (motion planning and visibility problems), geographic information systems (GIS) (geometrical location and search, route planning), integrated circuit design (IC geometry design and verification), computer-aided engineering (CAE) (mesh generation), computer vision (3D reconstruction). Theoretical results in machine learning mainly deal with
3276-464: Is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved "in parallel" . There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level , instruction level , data , and task parallelism . Parallelism has been employed for many years, mainly in high-performance computing , but interest in it has grown lately due to
3393-604: Is a scientific area that refers to the study and development of algorithms and software for manipulating mathematical expressions and other mathematical objects . Although, properly speaking, computer algebra should be a subfield of scientific computing , they are generally considered as distinct fields because scientific computing is usually based on numerical computation with approximate floating point numbers , while symbolic computation emphasizes exact computation with expressions containing variables that have not any given value and are thus manipulated as symbols (therefore
3510-577: Is a software system in which components located on networked computers communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages . The components interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal. Three significant characteristics of distributed systems are: concurrency of components, lack of a global clock, and independent failure of components. Examples of distributed systems vary from SOA-based systems to massively multiplayer online games to peer-to-peer applications , and blockchain networks like Bitcoin . A computer program that runs in
3627-452: Is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1), quantum computation uses qubits (quantum bits), which can be in superpositions of states. A theoretical model is the quantum Turing machine , also known as the universal quantum computer. Quantum computers share theoretical similarities with non-deterministic and probabilistic computers ; one example is the ability to be in more than one state simultaneously. The field of quantum computing
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3744-424: Is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function . Starting from an initial state and initial input (perhaps empty ), the instructions describe a computation that, when executed , proceeds through a finite number of well-defined successive states, eventually producing "output" and terminating at a final ending state. The transition from one state to
3861-765: Is at the intersection of mathematics , statistics , computer science , physics , neurobiology , and electrical engineering . Its impact has been crucial to the success of the Voyager missions to deep space, the invention of the compact disc, the feasibility of mobile phones, the development of the Internet , the study of linguistics and of human perception, the understanding of black holes , and numerous other fields. Important sub-fields of information theory are source coding , channel coding , algorithmic complexity theory , algorithmic information theory , information-theoretic security , and measures of information. Machine learning
3978-487: Is based on empirical observations and is capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers working under the same conditions. 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 specialised disciplines. For example, physical science can be subdivided into physics, chemistry , astronomy , and earth science . Modern natural science
4095-439: 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. Interdisciplinary science involves
4212-646: Is considered to be one of the most important publications in medicine and was used until the 18th century. By the eleventh century most of Europe had become Christian, and in 1088, the University of Bologna emerged as the first university in Europe. As such, demand for Latin translation of ancient and scientific texts grew, a major contributor to the Renaissance of the 12th century . Renaissance scholasticism in western Europe flourished, with experiments done by observing, describing, and classifying subjects in nature. In
4329-535: Is highly collaborative and is usually done by teams in academic and research institutions , government agencies, and companies. The practical impact of their work has led to the emergence of science policies that seek to influence the scientific enterprise by prioritising the ethical and moral development of commercial products, armaments, health care, public infrastructure, and environmental protection . The word science has been used in Middle English since
4446-420: Is often distinguished by its emphasis on mathematical technique and rigor . While logical inference and mathematical proof had existed previously, in 1931 Kurt Gödel proved with his incompleteness theorem that there are fundamental limitations on what statements could be proved or disproved. Information theory was added to the field with a 1948 mathematical theory of communication by Claude Shannon . In
4563-584: Is the one-time pad —but these schemes are more difficult to implement than the best theoretically breakable but computationally secure mechanisms. A data structure is a particular way of organizing data in a computer so that it can be used efficiently . Different kinds of data structures are suited to different kinds of applications, and some are highly specialized to specific tasks. For example, databases use B-tree indexes for small percentages of data retrieval and compilers and databases use dynamic hash tables as look up tables. Data structures provide
4680-447: Is the search for solutions to practical problems using this knowledge. Most understanding comes from basic research, though sometimes applied research targets specific practical problems. This leads to technological advances that were not previously imaginable. Scientific research involves using the scientific method , which seeks to objectively explain the events of nature in a reproducible way. Scientists usually take for granted
4797-526: Is the successor to the natural philosophy that began in Ancient Greece . Galileo , Descartes , Bacon , and Newton debated the benefits of using approaches that were more mathematical and more experimental in a methodical way. Still, philosophical perspectives, conjectures , and presuppositions , often overlooked, remain necessary in natural science. Systematic data collection, including discovery science , succeeded natural history , which emerged in
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4914-427: Is the use of the scientific method and knowledge to attain practical goals and includes a broad range of disciplines such as engineering and medicine. Engineering is the use of scientific principles to invent, design and build machines, structures and technologies. Science may contribute to the development of new technologies. Medicine is the practice of caring for patients by maintaining and restoring health through
5031-464: Is theoretically possible to break such a system, but it is infeasible to do so by any known practical means. These schemes are therefore termed computationally secure; theoretical advances, e.g., improvements in integer factorization algorithms, and faster computing technology require these solutions to be continually adapted. There exist information-theoretically secure schemes that provably cannot be broken even with unlimited computing power—an example
5148-523: Is typically divided into two or three major branches: the natural sciences (e.g., physics , chemistry , and biology ), which study the physical world ; and the behavioural sciences (e.g., economics , psychology , and sociology ), which study individuals and societies. The formal sciences (e.g., logic , mathematics, and theoretical computer science ), which study formal systems governed by axioms and rules, are sometimes described as being sciences as well; however, they are often regarded as
5265-479: Is understood to be a task that is in principle amenable to being solved by a computer, which is equivalent to stating that the problem may be solved by mechanical application of mathematical steps, such as an algorithm . A problem is regarded as inherently difficult if its solution requires significant resources, whatever the algorithm used. The theory formalizes this intuition, by introducing mathematical models of computation to study these problems and quantifying
5382-403: Is used to make falsifiable predictions, which are typically posted before being tested by experimentation. Disproof of a prediction is evidence of progress. Experimentation is especially important in science to help establish causal relationships to avoid the correlation fallacy , though in some sciences such as astronomy or geology, a predicted observation might be more appropriate. When
5499-410: Is used to summarise and analyse data, which allows scientists to assess the reliability of experimental results. In the scientific method an explanatory thought experiment or hypothesis is put forward as an explanation using parsimony principles and is expected to seek consilience – fitting with other accepted facts related to an observation or scientific question. This tentative explanation
5616-610: The Byzantine empire and Arabic translations were done by groups such as the Nestorians and the Monophysites . Under the Caliphate , these Arabic translations were later improved and developed by Arabic scientists. By the 6th and 7th centuries, the neighbouring Sassanid Empire established the medical Academy of Gondeshapur , which is considered by Greek, Syriac, and Persian physicians as
5733-706: The Early Middle Ages (400 to 1000 CE), but in the Medieval renaissances ( Carolingian Renaissance , Ottonian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century ) scholarship flourished again. Some Greek manuscripts lost in Western Europe were preserved and expanded upon in the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age , along with the later efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek manuscripts from
5850-599: The Proto-Italic language as * skije- or * skijo- meaning "to know", which may originate from Proto-Indo-European language as *skh 1 -ie , *skh 1 -io , meaning "to incise". The Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben proposed sciō is a back-formation of nescīre , meaning "to not know, be unfamiliar with", which may derive from Proto-Indo-European *sekH- in Latin secāre , or *skh 2 - , from *sḱʰeh2(i)- meaning "to cut". In
5967-941: The Radcliffe Observatory , the Radcliffe Infirmary and the Radcliffe Library , which was intended to contain "modern books in all faculties and languages, not in the Bodleian Library". The library's building on a site south of the Bodleian Library was completed in 1749 and is now known as the Radcliffe Camera . The scientific books housed in the Radcliffe Camera were transferred to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in 1861. A new Radcliffe Library building opened in 1901, on land next to
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#17328442994116084-555: The camera obscura and the telescope . At the start of the Renaissance, Roger Bacon , Vitello , and John Peckham each built up a scholastic ontology upon a causal chain beginning with sensation, perception, and finally apperception of the individual and universal forms of Aristotle. A model of vision later known as perspectivism was exploited and studied by the artists of the Renaissance. This theory uses only three of Aristotle's four causes: formal, material, and final. In
6201-424: 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. Formal science is an area of study that generates knowledge using formal systems . A formal system is an abstract structure used for inferring theorems from axioms according to
6318-431: 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]". Science during
6435-499: The prevention , diagnosis , and treatment of injury or disease. The applied sciences are often contrasted with the basic sciences , which are focused on advancing scientific theories and laws that explain and predict events in the natural world. 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
6552-412: The quantification of information . Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and communicating data. Since its inception it has broadened to find applications in many other areas, including statistical inference , natural language processing , cryptography , neurobiology ,
6669-481: The theory of impetus . His criticism served as an inspiration to medieval scholars and Galileo Galilei, who extensively cited his works ten centuries later. During late antiquity and the early Middle Ages , natural phenomena were mainly examined via the Aristotelian approach. The approach includes Aristotle's four causes : material, formal, moving, and final cause. Many Greek classical texts were preserved by
6786-406: The 13th century, medical teachers and students at Bologna began opening human bodies, leading to the first anatomy textbook based on human dissection by Mondino de Luzzi . New developments in optics played a role in the inception of the Renaissance , both by challenging long-held metaphysical ideas on perception, as well as by contributing to the improvement and development of technology such as
6903-707: The 14th century in the sense of "the state of knowing". The word was borrowed from the Anglo-Norman language as the suffix -cience , which was borrowed from the Latin word scientia , meaning "knowledge, awareness, understanding". It is a noun derivative of the Latin sciens meaning "knowing", and undisputedly derived from the Latin sciō , the present participle scīre , meaning "to know". There are many hypotheses for science ' s ultimate word origin. According to Michiel de Vaan , Dutch linguist and Indo-Europeanist , sciō may have its origin in
7020-444: The 16th century by describing and classifying plants, animals, minerals, and other biotic beings. Today, "natural history" suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences. Social science is the study of human behaviour and the functioning of societies. It has many disciplines that include, but are not limited to anthropology , economics, history, human geography , political science , psychology, and sociology. In
7137-633: The 3rd millennium BCE, the ancient Egyptians developed a decimal numbering system , solved practical problems using geometry , and developed a calendar . Their healing therapies involved drug treatments and the supernatural, such as prayers, incantations , and rituals. The ancient Mesopotamians used knowledge about the properties of various natural chemicals for manufacturing pottery , faience , glass, soap, metals, lime plaster , and waterproofing. They studied animal physiology , anatomy , behaviour , and astrology for divinatory purposes. The Mesopotamians had an intense interest in medicine and
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#17328442994117254-404: The Enlightenment was dominated by scientific societies and academies , which had largely replaced universities as centres of scientific research and development. Societies and academies were the backbones of the maturation of the scientific profession. Another important development was the popularisation of science among an increasingly literate population. Enlightenment philosophers turned to
7371-634: The Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity , whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes, while further advancements, including the introduction of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system , were made during the Golden Age of India . Scientific research deteriorated in these regions after the fall of the Western Roman Empire during
7488-410: The Greek philosopher Leucippus and his student Democritus . Later, Epicurus would develop a full natural cosmology based on atomism, and would adopt a "canon" (ruler, standard) which established physical criteria or standards of scientific truth. The Greek doctor Hippocrates established the tradition of systematic medical science and is known as " The Father of Medicine ". A turning point in
7605-640: The Greek word αὐτόματα meaning "self-acting". Automata Theory is the study of self-operating virtual machines to help in the logical understanding of input and output process, without or with intermediate stage(s) of computation (or any function /process). Coding theory is the study of the properties of codes and their fitness for a specific application. Codes are used for data compression , cryptography , error correction and more recently also for network coding . Codes are studied by various scientific disciplines – such as information theory , electrical engineering , mathematics , and computer science – for
7722-453: The Milesian school, which was founded by Thales of Miletus and later continued by his successors Anaximander and Anaximenes , were the first to attempt to explain natural phenomena without relying on the supernatural . The Pythagoreans developed a complex number philosophy and contributed significantly to the development of mathematical science. The theory of atoms was developed by
7839-551: The Origin of Species , published in 1859. Separately, Gregor Mendel presented his paper, " Experiments on Plant Hybridization " in 1865, which outlined the principles of biological inheritance, serving as the basis for modern genetics. Early in the 19th century John Dalton suggested the modern atomic theory , based on Democritus's original idea of indivisible particles called atoms . The laws of conservation of energy , conservation of momentum and conservation of mass suggested
7956-552: The RSL. In December 2018 it was announced that the premises would be used as the basis of a new non-residential graduate college of the university, Reuben College , alongside the library. The library closed for refurbishment in December 2019 and reopened in October 2023. The RSL building consists of three parts, developed as expansion of the library was necessary: From 2023 the library occupies
8073-472: The advent of writing systems in early civilisations like Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia , creating the earliest written records in the history of science in around 3000 to 1200 BCE . Although the words and concepts of "science" and "nature" were not part of the conceptual landscape at the time, the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians made contributions that would later find a place in Greek and medieval science: mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. From
8190-469: The amount of resources needed to solve them, such as time and storage. Other complexity measures are also used, such as the amount of communication (used in communication complexity ), the number of gates in a circuit (used in circuit complexity ) and the number of processors (used in parallel computing ). One of the roles of computational complexity theory is to determine the practical limits on what computers can and cannot do. Computational geometry
8307-423: The application of a fairly broad variety of theoretical computer science fundamentals, in particular logic calculi, formal languages , automata theory , and program semantics , but also type systems and algebraic data types to problems in software and hardware specification and verification. Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics , electrical engineering , and computer science involving
8424-398: The combination of two or more disciplines into one, such as bioinformatics , a combination of biology and computer science or cognitive sciences . The concept has existed since the ancient Greek period and it became popular again in the 20th century. Scientific research can be labelled as either basic or applied research. Basic research is the search for knowledge and applied research
8541-610: The course of tens of thousands of years, taking different forms around the world, and few details are known about the very earliest developments. Women likely played a central role in prehistoric science, as did religious rituals . Some scholars use the term " protoscience " to label activities in the past that resemble modern science in some but not all features; however, this label has also been criticised as denigrating, or too suggestive of presentism , thinking about those activities only in relation to modern categories. Direct evidence for scientific processes becomes clearer with
8658-443: The discipline of theoretical computer science, both depending on and affecting mathematics , software engineering, and linguistics . It is an active research area, with numerous dedicated academic journals. In programming language theory , semantics is the field concerned with the rigorous mathematical study of the meaning of programming languages . It does so by evaluating the meaning of syntactically legal strings defined by
8775-428: The disciplines of mathematics , computer science , and electrical engineering . Applications of cryptography include ATM cards , computer passwords , and electronic commerce . Modern cryptography is heavily based on mathematical theory and computer science practice; cryptographic algorithms are designed around computational hardness assumptions , making such algorithms hard to break in practice by any adversary. It
8892-505: The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel and Marie Curie in 1896, Marie Curie then became the first person to win two Nobel Prizes . In the next year came the discovery of the first subatomic particle, the electron . In the first half of the century the development of antibiotics and artificial fertilisers improved human living standards globally. Harmful environmental issues such as ozone depletion , ocean acidification , eutrophication , and climate change came to
9009-517: The dying Byzantine Empire to Western Europe at the start of the Renaissance . The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived " natural philosophy ", which was later transformed by the Scientific Revolution that began in the 16th century as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions. The scientific method soon played
9126-584: The earliest medical prescriptions appeared in Sumerian during the Third Dynasty of Ur . They seem to have studied scientific subjects which had practical or religious applications and had little interest in satisfying curiosity. In classical antiquity , there is no real ancient analogue of a modern scientist. Instead, well-educated, usually upper-class, and almost universally male individuals performed various investigations into nature whenever they could afford
9243-482: The evolution and function of molecular codes, model selection in statistics, thermal physics, quantum computing , linguistics , plagiarism detection, pattern recognition , anomaly detection and other forms of data analysis . Applications of fundamental topics of information theory include lossless data compression (e.g. ZIP files ), lossy data compression (e.g. MP3s and JPEGs ), and channel coding (e.g. for Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) ). The field
9360-480: The field is integer factorization . Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties (called adversaries ). More generally, it is about constructing and analyzing protocols that overcome the influence of adversaries and that are related to various aspects in information security such as data confidentiality , data integrity , authentication , and non-repudiation . Modern cryptography intersects
9477-471: The field. Machine learning is employed in a range of computing tasks where designing and programming explicit, rule-based algorithms is infeasible. Example applications include spam filtering , optical character recognition (OCR), search engines and computer vision . Machine learning is sometimes conflated with data mining , although that focuses more on exploratory data analysis. Machine learning and pattern recognition "can be viewed as two facets of
9594-462: The free energy of the universe is seen as constantly declining: the entropy of a closed universe increases over time. The electromagnetic theory was established in the 19th century by the works of Hans Christian Ørsted , André-Marie Ampère , Michael Faraday , James Clerk Maxwell , Oliver Heaviside , and Heinrich Hertz . The new theory raised questions that could not easily be answered using Newton's framework. The discovery of X-rays inspired
9711-425: The frequent use of precision instruments; the emergence of terms such as "biologist", "physicist", and "scientist"; an increased professionalisation of those studying nature; scientists gaining cultural authority over many dimensions of society; the industrialisation of numerous countries; the thriving of popular science writings; and the emergence of science journals. During the late 19th century, psychology emerged as
9828-823: The functioning of the brain , Darwinian evolution , group behavior , the immune system , the defining properties of life forms, cell membranes , and morphogenesis . Besides traditional electronic hardware , these computational paradigms can be implemented on alternative physical media such as biomolecules (DNA, RNA), or trapped-ion quantum computing devices. Dually, one can view processes occurring in nature as information processing. Such processes include self-assembly , developmental processes , gene regulation networks, protein–protein interaction networks, biological transport ( active transport , passive transport ) networks, and gene assembly in unicellular organisms . Efforts to understand biological systems also include engineering of semi-synthetic organisms, and understanding
9945-519: The genes of the human genome . The first induced pluripotent human stem cells were made in 2006, allowing adult cells to be transformed into stem cells and turn into any cell type found in the body. With the affirmation of the Higgs boson discovery in 2013, the last particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics was found. In 2015, gravitational waves , predicted by general relativity
10062-431: The heliocentric model. The printing press was widely used to publish scholarly arguments, including some that disagreed widely with contemporary ideas of nature. Francis Bacon and René Descartes published philosophical arguments in favour of a new type of non-Aristotelian science. Bacon emphasised the importance of experiment over contemplation, questioned the Aristotelian concepts of formal and final cause, promoted
10179-562: The history of early philosophical science was Socrates ' example of applying philosophy to the study of human matters, including human nature, the nature of political communities, and human knowledge itself. The Socratic method as documented by Plato 's dialogues is a dialectic method of hypothesis elimination: better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. The Socratic method searches for general commonly-held truths that shape beliefs and scrutinises them for consistency. Socrates criticised
10296-554: The idea that science should study the laws of nature and the improvement of all human life. Descartes emphasised individual thought and argued that mathematics rather than geometry should be used to study nature. At the start of the Age of Enlightenment , Isaac Newton formed the foundation of classical mechanics by his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica , greatly influencing future physicists. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz incorporated terms from Aristotelian physics , now used in
10413-509: The late 20th century active recruitment of women and elimination of sex discrimination greatly increased the number of women scientists, but large gender disparities remained in some fields. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1964 led to a rejection of the steady-state model of the universe in favour of the Big Bang theory of Georges Lemaître . The century saw fundamental changes within science disciplines. Evolution became
10530-520: The most common. Communication and synchronization between the different subtasks are typically some of the greatest obstacles to getting good parallel program performance. The maximum possible speed-up of a single program as a result of parallelization is known as Amdahl's law . Programming language theory is a branch of computer science that deals with the design, implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification of programming languages and their individual features . It falls within
10647-608: The most important medical center of the ancient world. The House of Wisdom was established in Abbasid -era Baghdad , Iraq , where the Islamic study of Aristotelianism flourished until the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. Ibn al-Haytham , better known as Alhazen, used controlled experiments in his optical study. Avicenna 's compilation of the Canon of Medicine , a medical encyclopaedia,
10764-572: The museum (on the corner of Parks Road and South Parks Road ). In 1927, the library lost its independence, for financial efficiency becoming part of the Bodleian Library . The library took on its current name, the Radcliffe Science Library , and gained the right as a legal deposit library to receive a copy of all new British scientific publications. The building has doors with relief wood carvings by Don Potter , undertaken while he
10881-416: The name of symbolic computation ). Software applications that perform symbolic calculations are called computer algebra systems , with the term system alluding to the complexity of the main applications that include, at least, a method to represent mathematical data in a computer, a user programming language (usually different from the language used for the implementation), a dedicated memory manager,
10998-427: The next is not necessarily deterministic ; some algorithms, known as randomized algorithms , incorporate random input. Automata theory is the study of abstract machines and automata , as well as the computational problems that can be solved using them. It is a theory in theoretical computer science, under discrete mathematics (a section of mathematics and also of computer science ). Automata comes from
11115-662: The notion that the only function of the eye is perception, and shifted the main focus in optics from the eye to the propagation of light. Kepler is best known, however, for improving Copernicus' heliocentric model through the discovery of Kepler's laws of planetary motion . Kepler did not reject Aristotelian metaphysics and described his work as a search for the Harmony of the Spheres . Galileo had made significant contributions to astronomy, physics and engineering. However, he became persecuted after Pope Urban VIII sentenced him for writing about
11232-447: The older type of study of physics as too purely speculative and lacking in self-criticism . Aristotle in the 4th century BCE created a systematic program of teleological philosophy. In the 3rd century BCE, Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos was the first to propose a heliocentric model of the universe, with the Sun at the centre and all the planets orbiting it. Aristarchus's model
11349-598: The past, science was a synonym for "knowledge" or "study", in keeping with its Latin origin. A person who conducted scientific research was called a "natural philosopher" or "man of science". In 1834, William Whewell introduced the term scientist in a review of Mary Somerville 's book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences , crediting it to "some ingenious gentleman" (possibly himself). Science has no single origin. Rather, systematic methods emerged gradually over
11466-487: The physical constraints preventing frequency scaling . As power consumption (and consequently heat generation) by computers has become a concern in recent years, parallel computing has become the dominant paradigm in computer architecture , mainly in the form of multi-core processors . Parallel computer programs are more difficult to write than sequential ones, because concurrency introduces several new classes of potential software bugs , of which race conditions are
11583-453: The program will execute on a certain platform , hence creating a model of computation . A quantum computer is a computation system that makes direct use of quantum-mechanical phenomena , such as superposition and entanglement , to perform operations on data . Quantum computers are different from digital computers based on transistors . Whereas digital computers require data to be encoded into binary digits ( bits ), each of which
11700-562: The public's attention and caused the onset of environmental studies . During this period scientific experimentation became increasingly larger in scale and funding . The extensive technological innovation stimulated by World War I , World War II , and the Cold War led to competitions between global powers , such as the Space Race and nuclear arms race . Substantial international collaborations were also made, despite armed conflicts. In
11817-435: The purpose of designing efficient and reliable data transmission methods. This typically involves the removal of redundancy and the correction (or detection) of errors in the transmitted data. Computational complexity theory is a branch of the theory of computation that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty, and relating those classes to each other. A computational problem
11934-401: The results might be. Taken in its entirety, the scientific method allows for highly creative problem solving while minimising the effects of subjective and confirmation bias . Intersubjective verifiability , the ability to reach a consensus and reproduce results, is fundamental to the creation of all scientific knowledge. Theoretical computer science It is difficult to circumscribe
12051-408: The same decade, Donald Hebb introduced a mathematical model of learning in the brain. With mounting biological data supporting this hypothesis with some modification, the fields of neural networks and parallel distributed processing were established. In 1971, Stephen Cook and, working independently , Leonid Levin , proved that there exist practically relevant problems that are NP-complete –
12168-791: The same field." Natural computing , also called natural computation, is a terminology introduced to encompass three classes of methods: 1) those that take inspiration from nature for the development of novel problem-solving techniques; 2) those that are based on the use of computers to synthesize natural phenomena; and 3) those that employ natural materials (e.g., molecules) to compute. The main fields of research that compose these three branches are artificial neural networks , evolutionary algorithms , swarm intelligence , artificial immune systems , fractal geometry, artificial life , DNA computing , and quantum computing , among others. Computational paradigms studied by natural computing are abstracted from natural phenomena as diverse as self-replication ,
12285-399: The samples that have never been previously seen by the algorithm. The goal of the supervised learning algorithm is to optimize some measure of performance such as minimizing the number of mistakes made on new samples. Computational number theory , also known as algorithmic number theory , is the study of algorithms for performing number theoretic computations . The best known problem in
12402-465: The second floors of the Jackson and Worthington buildings, the former Lankester room and stack are a museum Collections Teaching and Research Centre for the university and other spaces are used by Reuben College or shared. Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science
12519-453: The seminal encyclopaedia Natural History . Positional notation for representing numbers likely emerged between the 3rd and 5th centuries CE along Indian trade routes. This numeral system made efficient arithmetic operations more accessible and would eventually become standard for mathematics worldwide. Due to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire , the 5th century saw an intellectual decline and knowledge of Greek conceptions of
12636-567: The sixteenth century Nicolaus Copernicus formulated a heliocentric model of the Solar System, stating that the planets revolve around the Sun, instead of the geocentric model where the planets and the Sun revolve around the Earth. This was based on a theorem that the orbital periods of the planets are longer as their orbs are farther from the centre of motion, which he found not to agree with Ptolemy's model. Johannes Kepler and others challenged
12753-405: 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. 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
12870-566: The staircase at the eastern end of the Jackson Wing of the RSL. The area which housed the Hooke Library collection became part of the RSL, with the ground floor of the Abbot's Kitchen transformed into a refreshment area and a training room. Until 2007, the library was a reference library rather than a lending library . During 2007 the building and collection of the Hooke Library was integrated into
12987-645: The theoretical areas precisely. The ACM 's Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) provides the following description: TCS covers a wide variety of topics including algorithms , data structures , computational complexity , parallel and distributed computation, probabilistic computation , quantum computation , automata theory , information theory , cryptography , program semantics and verification , algorithmic game theory , machine learning , computational biology , computational economics , computational geometry , and computational number theory and algebra . Work in this field
13104-476: The time. Before the invention or discovery of the concept of phusis or nature by the pre-Socratic philosophers , the same words tend to be used to describe the natural "way" in which a plant grows, and the "way" in which, for example, one tribe worships a particular god. For this reason, it is claimed that these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense and the first to clearly distinguish "nature" and "convention". The early Greek philosophers of
13221-460: The universe itself from the point of view of information processing. Indeed, the idea was even advanced that information is more fundamental than matter or energy. The Zuse-Fredkin thesis, dating back to the 1960s, states that the entire universe is a huge cellular automaton which continuously updates its rules. Recently it has been suggested that the whole universe is a quantum computer that computes its own behaviour. Parallel computing
13338-476: The world deteriorated in Western Europe. During the period, Latin encyclopaedists such as Isidore of Seville preserved the majority of general ancient knowledge. In contrast, because the Byzantine Empire resisted attacks from invaders, they were able to preserve and improve prior learning. John Philoponus , a Byzantine scholar in the 500s, started to question Aristotle's teaching of physics, introducing
13455-648: Was first introduced by Yuri Manin in 1980 and Richard Feynman in 1982. A quantum computer with spins as quantum bits was also formulated for use as a quantum space–time in 1968. Experiments have been carried out in which quantum computational operations were executed on a very small number of qubits. Both practical and theoretical research continues, and many national governments and military funding agencies support quantum computing research to develop quantum computers for both civilian and national security purposes, such as cryptanalysis . Computer algebra , also called symbolic computation or algebraic computation
13572-582: Was studying with the sculptor Eric Gill . With the construction of a basement in the 1970s, part of the building was used to form The Hooke Library , a (separate) science lending library for undergraduates, which was named after Robert Hooke , a scientist who worked in Oxford. The Hooke Library housed its collection in the ground floor of the Abbot's Kitchen which was originally part of the University Museum and on
13689-501: Was widely rejected because it was believed to violate the laws of physics, while Ptolemy's Almagest , which contains a geocentric description of the Solar System , was accepted through the early Renaissance instead. The inventor and mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse made major contributions to the beginnings of calculus . Pliny the Elder was a Roman writer and polymath, who wrote
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