The Educational Status of the Natural Science Subjects

The division of the sciences into "human sciences" and "natural sciences" is perhaps one of the richest in its implications and at the same time one of the most erroneous constructs in the history of science. The existing classification of disciplines includes all disciplines that have to do with objects and lawful processes in animate and inanimate nature as "natural sciences." However, this ascription, which in fact also places mathematics among the natural sciences—although it ought to be regarded as belonging on the inner territory of the "human sciences" since it is a pure product of human cognitive capacities (compare the customary placing of mathematics in the natural science departments in the universities)—is, like everything else we think and observe, a result of a historical process. Nor is truth guaranteed by referring to historical processes, however venerable they might be. Historical processes are always also marked by many chance occurrences and errors.