The auxiliary sciences or auxiliary disciplines are those that, without fully addressing a specific area of study, are linked to it and provide assistance, since their possible applications contribute to the development of said area of study.
These auxiliary disciplines can come from different fields, as in the case of other sciences, or they can be disciplines whose specific objective is part of the range of interests addressed by the science to which it serves as an auxiliary.
In the first case, there is a collaboration between sciences, while in the second it is about disciplines created to explore specific sectors of the field of study of a given science, such as a sub-discipline.
Auxiliary Sciences of Chemistry
The auxiliary disciplines of the chemistry They provide tools and objects of study necessary to face the complexity of the approach to the matter of the universe and its possible transformations, from perspectives that are not strictly its own.
This can result in a new mixed discipline or it can, instead, occupy a more implicit and silent place within the area of interests of chemistry.
For example, the biology you can collaborate with chemistry to enter the world of biochemistry, the chemistry of life. Also the mathematics lends its logical language to chemistry so that it can carry out its fundamental operations.
List of Auxiliary Sciences of Chemistry
- farming. Although little mentioned, chemurgy is the result of cooperation between chemistry and agriculture. This discipline undertakes the transformation processes of agricultural materials to produce industrial inputs, fuels, fertilizers and other types of substances that can be used by various manufacturing processes.
- Economy. In the composition of industrial chemistry, a discipline specialized in the mechanisms of production and manufacture of heavy compounds such as metals and other marketable chemical products, the economy and its specific knowledge on the production of consumer goods and services play an important role.
- biology. Biochemistry is the discipline resulting from the collaboration between chemistry and biology. It is characterized by focusing its investigative and experimental efforts on organic substances such as the chemistry of the body’s metabolic processes.
- Statistics. It is a branch of mathematics in charge of the calculation of variations, random processes and probabilities. Chemistry often borrows statistical calculation tools to undertake quantitative analysis of its results and express them in verifiable logical language.
- geology. It is a science that studies the formation of soils and the earth’s crust. It borrows much of the knowledge of chemistry and in return offers the possibility of founding a new science: geochemistry, a branch of chemistry in charge of the analysis of the matter that makes up the different types of soil and sometimes also the waters.
- Math. The contribution of mathematics to chemistry is fundamental, since many of its results are expressed in mathematical terms, in addition to allowing the proportional calculation of substances and is key in laboratory experimentation. In addition, it allows chemistry to make graphs and tables to formally express its findings.
- Physical. The collaborations between physics and chemistry are numerous, and although they can open up a whole disciplinary field for the study of physicochemistry, that is, the mixed analysis of matter from the perspective of its constitution and its behavior in the environment, it also provides the experimental model of chemistry with a significant number of matter separation procedures and specific knowledge of forces.
- History. As in the case of many scientific disciplines, the contributions of history are key to understanding its evolution over time and studying the context in which the great exponents of the field made and published their findings.
- Astronomy. In the study of the celestial stars and the universe outside the Earth, astronomy and chemistry collaborate closely and form astrochemistry, a science that investigates the reactions of matter in the context of celestial mechanisms and the distant universe.
- Quantum mechanics. This branch of physics studies atomic matter and the elemental forces that govern it. It gives chemistry the opportunity to inaugurate quantum chemistry, a branch that explores and describes matter at the molecular and atomic scale using quantum field theory. In this it is also linked to other branches of physics such as molecular physics or atomic physics.
- Computing. Numerous software and hardware products serve the experimental needs of chemistry and provide them with a fast and convenient solution.
- engineering. This applied science also has a close mutual collaboration with chemistry, because while chemistry gives it the theoretical knowledge to transform matter and develop its ingenuity, engineering offers experimental chemistry the possibility of designing pieces of equipment to suit its needs, which allow increasingly complex and reliable experiments to be carried out.
- Petroleum engineering. Petroleum engineering shows a case of particular collaboration with chemistry, since together they constitute the oil industry in its various stages of evaluation, extraction and refinement of crude oil to obtain various industrial products such as gasoline, plastics and many more.
- Nanotechnology. This discipline is part of the technological and scientific avant-garde of the 21st century, and with it, chemistry is given the opportunity to study the interactions of atomic particles, at whose scale the quantum effects become appreciable and significant. This mixed discipline is known as nanochemistry.
- Electricity. This discipline is part of the interests of chemistry since it comes from its studies in the handling of charged particles. However, it also provides chemistry with numerous useful procedures such as electrolysis (separation of substances from the application of electricity), useful to obtain elements in their pure state or to force a certain type of chemical reactions.
- Medicine. His understanding of the various processes of the body provides organic chemistry with numerous opportunities to put its theories into practice, so the two sciences constantly feed back on each other.
- Paleontology. The collaboration of chemistry with paleontology opens up an extremely interesting territory since it allows the analysis of the effect of time on various organic materials. For example, determining the age of a fossil residue from the chemical reactions of carbon on its surface (also called the “carbon-14 test”).
- Ecology. The collaboration between ecology (science of the study of ecosystems and the environment) and chemistry provides the opportunity to open the field of environmental chemistry, a branch of this science whose specific interest is the application of knowledge about the matter to urgent dilemma of the preservation of the environment. Called “green chemistry”, it is interested in the study of air, water and soil pollution, as well as the processes to reverse it.
- Pharmacology. From the mutual aid between pharmacology and chemistry, a vital field for the existence of man arises and that concerns the manufacture and study of drugs, and manages to maximize their effectiveness and protect our body from its collateral effects. This discipline is known as “pharmaceutical chemistry.”
- Linguistics. The participation of linguistics in chemistry has to do with the nomenclature of compounds, many of which have names derived from Latin (something similar to biology, which names species using Latin) or from other languages.