Which do you think is the most important science?

Yes, philosophy is not considered a science in the everyday sense of the word, but a theoretical science. But do you know why the word PhD stands for the Doctorate of Philosophy?

That's a bit of mischaracterising the subject-matter of philosophy to be honest. You are taught those literacy skills in order to get your point across effectively. Although many people would define philosophy differently, its subject-matter does involve studying the foundation of knowledge.

The highlighted areas were created and developed by mathematicians* working for spy agencies and the military, not physicists. If you meant nuclear and rocket technology, now that was developed by a bunch of physicists (who were awesome!).

These same mathematicians then created the concept of electronic databases to run on these huge computers using relational algebra and calculus. You punch in the code telling the machine to fetch/ shape / slice your data, the machines performs the maths to go and do it for you. Telecommunication worked in a similar fashion - data was encapsulated in code split into chunks, sent over the wire and then reassembled into my mom's Christmas message using mathematics.

* these mathematicians then tried to solve a problem created by the physicists - nuclear war. In the event the physicists' invention the nuclear bomb destroyed everything, there needed to be something to allow the remnants of mankind and the military in their secret bunkers to communicate so they can rebuild society. Thus these mathematicians invented the most time wasting invention known to man - the Internet.

.......................followed by cute cat videos......

The OP gave a choice of physics, chemistry, or biology, so I chose physics. Also I wasn't talking of the founding principles of computer science - I probably know at least as much about those as you - I was talking about the implementations of those on which we have relied for so many decades, which were developed using principles developed by physicists.

Also, telecommunications was not developed by mathematicians - unless you're counting Maxwell, who did nothing more than theorize that light and electromagnetic waves were the same thing and could be propagated through free space. The people who used those equations to develop wireless telegraphy were physicists (Hughes, Hertz, Marconi, et al).

You claim that nuclear and rocket technologies were developed by physicists. Maybe that's true - but they were conceived by mathematicians too (most notably nuclear, which was famously conceived - and later regretted - by Albert Einstein).

Now, ask yourself two questions:

It's the chemical properties of elements. Chemistry is the study of atoms, so electrons, protons etc are still part of chemistry, the subject doesn't just stop at molecules. And once again, you don't need an advanced understanding of quantum mechanics to be able to predict and carry out reactions.

Organic chemists had no problem doing reactions before quantum mechanics was even discovered, how do you explain that?
And you don't need to know about physical chemistry to predict the outcomes of reactions.

And no, you can't always skip the practical approach, because reactions don't always happen the way you think they will. I don't think you would be saying this if you had ever actually been in a lab and done chemical reactions...

As I said, I'm doing a PhD in organic chemistry and I have no problem predicting and analysing reactions despite not having done quantum mechanics since my second year and remembering basically nothing about it..

Silly point to make as then we'd get into the topic of engineering. How nuclear magnetic resonance actually works is dependent on the property of atoms, which is chemistry.

There is a lot of overlap between chemistry of course, but to say quantum mechanics is necessary to work in all areas of chemistry is just absurd. The overwhelming majority of chemists who don't work in the field of quantum mechanics are obvious proof that what you're saying isn't true.

I don't think this is a very useful question because the different sciences deal with different areas. Physics will be useless when dealing with organisms, medicine etc and biology will be useless when talking about how natural laws work. Chemistry is the central science, but there are also many areas where biology or physics will be more useful so it really depends on the scientific context.

And this is coming from a chemist.

.........which came from Western tradition (which traditionally emphasised humanities and religion over science), and not by logical design.

In the same way Philosophy only really touched upon ideas in Europe, largely ignoring the rest of the world... which leads me to address your next comment.

It's not the foundation of knowledge unless you qualify that with 'in Europe' or 'in the western world'. It is largely a western-centric study of mostly western knowledge. To say it is the foundation of knowledge is at best a misconception, at worst a blatant lie.

I wonder what would Philosophy be, if it did include ideas from the whole world? Probably, the Greek/Roman/European philosophers would only be a very small part of it. But it would then it might go towards the claim to be the foundation of knowledge.

"Rocket science" we'll be needing a new planet soon ~

The chemical properties of elements result from the physical properties of them. For example, Flourine is a toxic gas, and we both can agree that it's a chemical property of it. Surely it's toxic because it's an oxidsing agent, a powerful one in fact. But this oxidising power emerge from the electrostatic force of the nucleus of fluorine, and its small atomic radius adds to that effect. As a result, this oxiding power in turn give rise to other chemical properties of a wider class of compounds in which flourine can be found.

Chemical properties' link to physical properties is still chemistry! Protons, electrons, neutrons are all studied in chemistry and part of it. Again, chemistry doesn't just stop at the molecular level, it also studies atoms themselves and their constituent parts.

Again, this is absolutely false. The vast majority of reactions can be predicted fairly accurately without having the slightest understanding of quantum mechanics. All you really need to do is the chemical properties of elements and functional groups. You don't need quantum mechanics to explain it, it can be explained in organic chemistry terms. Again, you will find very few organic papers and journals that justify their reactions using physical chemistry.

You were saying a knowledge of quantum mechanics is necessary to do chemistry and this is categorically false. The overwhelming majority of chemists don't work in the field of quantum mechanics and will therefore know very little, if anything about it. And they still manage to do chemistry.

It is irrelevant who invented NMR as the concept itself relies on the properties of molecules and atoms, which is undeniably chemistry. The knowledge required to build actual machines would be engineering and a whole host of other fields. If you want to go down that pedantic route then chemistry would also be involved in making the machines, as you'd need to know the properties of materials.

Maybe biology and understanding of environmental sciences (biol, chem and physics) so we don't need them rockets and can take care of the planet we currently call home instead

My dear Alex ~ telling the commoner about the importance of preserving the planet is one thing.. But having leaders who deny the very existence of global warming and in a broader sense of protecting environment, simply because the place where he stands is not any warmer than yesterday or some years ago is another!

Rocket science ... the sooner the better ~

Of course there should be a boundary so that these different fields can be classified, but, as I said, those properties are essentially the knowledge of physics, and if you study them in the field of chemistry, it's simply because you need them.

And that's blatantly incorrect, they were and have been possible without any knowledge of quantum mechanics whatsoever. I repeat, QM was only discovered about 100 years ago and organic chemistry has been going on for far longer than that.

And I am saying that you can predict reactions and do pretty much all of organic chemistry without any real knowledge on QM. If you're looking at an organic reaction as an organic chemist, knowing wave-particle duality and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle etc is going to be worth sweet nothing when predicting how it will run and in which ways it can be improved.

And that's what exactly what my post says. I stated that QM is able to make predictions just by knowledge of subatomic particles, and not from hypotheses derived by carrying out experiments. How can chemistry predict the outcome of moving a charged particle without prior experimentation?

~wishes the star trek federation political idea was a thing IRL ... space travel, peaceful societies without war and replicators making all my food


edit... minus the borg maybe