THE 3 MOST IMPORTANT TYPES OF SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS - SCIENCE - 2025

There are three types of scientific concepts: metric, classificatory, and comparative. Concepts are abstract units of knowledge that serve to explain the world.

They are a representation or mental image about a situation, object, fact or quality. The word concept comes from the Latin conceptus which means "act of conceiving" or "thought."

Two conceptual systems are distinguished: qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative conceptual system encompasses the classificatory and comparative concepts. For its part, the quantitative conceptual system includes metric concepts.

The qualitative and the quantitative are two categories of knowledge through which human beings know reality.

Sometimes quantitative concepts are given more value because they are measurable, and this is reflected in the sciences. Some tend to believe that the formal sciences take precedence over the social sciences.

In the three types of concept there is no exclusivity between them. On the contrary, between these there is correspondence and complementarity.

The 3 types of scientific concepts

1- Classification concepts

Classifying concepts can be found in the nouns and adjectives that are used every day. These correspond to the quantitative.

These types of concepts are used to refer to a certain group of situations or objects that have one or more elements in common.

For example: male, female, boy, girl, tree, car, alive, green, old, hot, hardness, height, among others.

In general, each science, culture or people has classifying concepts to categorize things, be they animals or plants, according to the area where they live.

Science establishes the classification concepts by groups. For example, mammals are classified as primates, marsupials, monotremes, insectivores, among others.

Because the names of the objects or animals that are classified are not always common in any country or region, in scientific language these names are specified in Latin, so as not to give rise to misunderstandings.

Furthermore, scientific communities are constantly introducing new concepts and classifications of microorganisms or animals in any country.

2- Metric concepts

Metric concepts are also known as quantitative or magnitudes. They are those who establish numbers to objects and facts.

They were created by scientific language. Examples of these concepts are age, weight, time, mass, intensity, among others.

Time or mass are metric concepts through which real numbers are assigned to certain objects.

These types of concepts are known as scalar quantities. That is, the metric concept is then a scalar metric concept.

While other metric concepts, such as force or speed, are called vector quantities. This is because vectors are assigned to them; furthermore, they have a numerical value and a meaning.

For example, according to the metric concept of mass to measure two bodies, a number is assigned to each body according to the system of units used (kilograms, pounds or other).

If the measurement is in length, a number is assigned for every two landmarks or body landmarks to be measured on a flat surface.

This is called metrization and consists of introducing a metric concept to measure or compare a characteristic of an object.

3- Comparative concepts

They are those concepts that allow us to compare the differences or similarities of two objectives taking into account the properties they have in common. For example: height, hardness, age, among others.

These types of comparative concepts are a mixture of the classificatory and metric concepts.

For example, the blood relationship test corresponds to a comparative concept that uses the elements of the metric concept. It can also be in a metric concept by assigning a certain value to each degree of affiliation.

References

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