High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The natural sciences are those branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world through scientific methods. The term "natural science" is used to distinguish the subject from the social sciences, which apply the scientific method to study human behavior and social patterns; the humanities, which use a critical or analytical approach to study the human condition; and the formal sciences such as mathematics and logic, which use an a priori, as opposed to factual methodology to study formal systems.