Over much of the past two millennia, physics, chemistry, biology, and certain branches of mathematics were a part of natural philosophy, but during the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century these natural sciences emerged as unique research endeavors in their own right.
Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines and, through its inclusion of astronomy, perhaps the oldest.
A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, with its main goal being to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is the natural science of matter, involving the study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force.
