Areas of Knowledge

Mathematics is the study of numbers, patterns, and shapes. People who are experts at mathematics are called mathematicians.

Mathematics can find useful answers to real problems. A common saying is "Do the math," meaning check the answer and see
that it is right. For example, if we want to know if a new medicine will help to cure a disease, mathematics is used to answer that
question.

The way mathematicians solve problems is deduction. Deduction is the use of thinking to discover new ideas from old. For
example, from the simple idea of a triangle mathematicians found the Pythagorean theorem that in a right triangle the sum of the
squares of the two shorter sides is equal to the square of the longest side. Thus, if we know that the shorter sides of a right
triangle are 3 inches and 4 inches, we can deduce that the longest side is 5 inches, because the square of 3 is 9, the square of 4 is
16, and the square of 5 is 25; and 9 + 16 = 25.

Mathematics is necessary in business, science, engineering, construction and many other jobs.

Natural science refers to a naturalistic approach to the study of the universe, which is understood as obeying rules or law of
natural origin. The term natural science is also used to distinguish those fields that use the scientific method to study nature from
the social sciences, which use the scientific method to study human behavior and society; and from the formal sciences, such as
mathematics and logic, which use a different (a priori) methodology.

Human science (also, moral science and human sciences as typical in the UK) is a term applied to the investigation of human
life and activities by a rational, systematic and verifiable methodology that acknowledges the validity of both data derived by
impartial observation of sensory experience (objective phenomena) and data derived by means of impartial observation of
psychological experience (subjective phenomena). It includes but is not necessarily limited to fields of study commonly included
within the social sciences and humanities, including history, sociology, anthropology, and economics. Its use of an empirical
methodology that encompasses psychological experience contrasts to the purely positivistic approach typical of the natural
sciences (which exclude all methods not based solely on external sensory observations). Thus the term is often used to distinguish
not only the content of a field of study from those of the natural sciences, but also its methodology.

History is the study of the past. People know what has happened in the past by looking at things from the past: books,
newspapers and letters. Libraries, archives or museums collect and keep these things for studying history. A person who studies
history is called a historian. A person who studies prehistory is called an archaeologist and they study artifacts like pottery and
stone tools instead of written sources.

People can learn about the past by talking to people who remember things that happened in the past. This is called oral history.
When people who had been slaves and American Civil War survivors got old, some historians recorded everything that they said,
so that history would not be lost.

In old times people in different parts of the world kept different histories because they did not meet each other very often. Some
groups of people never met each other. Medieval Europe, Ancient Rome and Ancient China all thought that they ruled the only
important parts of the world and that other parts were "barbarian".

The word art is used to describe some activities or creations of human beings that have importance to the human mind, regarding
an attraction to the human senses. Therefore, art is made when a human expresses himself or herself. Some art is useful in a
practical sense, such as a sculptured clay bowl that one can put things in. Many people disagree on how to define art. Many
people say people are driven to make art due to their inner creativity. Art includes drawing, painting, sculpting, photography,
performance art, dance, music, poetry, prose and theatre.

Ethics is the part of philosophy that talks about good and evil. Ethics tries to answer questions like:

• What actions are good? What actions are evil?

• How can we tell the difference?
• Are good and evil the same for everyone?
• How should we make hard decisions that might help or hurt other people?

Some philosophers call ethics the "science of morality". Morality is what someone thinks or feels is good or bad. There are many
different moralities, but they share some things. For example most people think that murder (killing somebody) is wrong. Some
philosophers hope to find more things that moralities share. They think that ethics should use the scientific method to study things
that people think are good or bad.

Other philosophers think that ethics is separate from morality. They do not think that ethics can be studied using the scientific
method and they think it is closer to metaphysics. Some of them think like Platonists about what is good and bad.

Other philosophers believe that ethics is subjective. This means that they think that what is right for me is whatever I say is right.
This means that ethics is just a person's own morality. These philosophers do not think that ethics is the same for all people.