Americans physical chemist Juliana Goates and chemist and thermodynamicist Bevan Ott’s 2000 classification of thermodynamics as the preeminent example of exact science, per historical citation of Edward Guggenheim’s 1933 definition of thermodynamics as an "exact mathematical science", like classical mechanics and electromagnetism. [6]

“In this sentence [“heat is motion”] from New Instruments [1620] it is clear that Bacon, like Descartes, Count Rumford, Sir Humphry Davy and Young, had a more or less definite notion of the dynamic nature of heat and its convertibility into work. But the exact science which treats of heat as a mode of energy begins with the publication, in 1824, of the Reflections on Motive Power of Fire of Sadi Carnot, who Lord Kelvin calls the ‘profoundest thinker in thermodynamic philosophy’.”

“The physical sciences claim that they are exact sciences but they are at best correlation with observations.”

— Mirza Beg (2014), “Beg-Thims dialogue” (post #4), Jul 6.

“Life is not an exact science, it is an art.”

— Samuel Butler (c.1870) (Ѻ)

“Many persons indeed seem to entertain a prejudice against mathematical language, arising out of a confusion between a mathematical science and an exact science. They think that we must not pretend to calculate unless we have the precise data, which will give a precise answer to our calculations; but, in reality, there is no such thing as an exact science, except in a comparative sense.”

— Stanley Jevons (1871), Theory of Political Economy (pg. 6)

“It is a common observation that a science first begins to be ‘exact’ when it is quantitatively treated. What are called the exact sciences are no others than the mathematical ones.”

— Charles Peirce (1878), On the Doctrine of Chances [3]

“Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.”

— Bertrand Russell (1966) [4]

“Dobereiner helped in refining Russian platinum, discovered catalysis, and reported his work to Goethe. We can only suspect that Dobereiner read the tragedy Faust and the novella Elective Affinities. The latter work of art gave impulse to a new scientific field named 'human chemistry'. In the exact sciences there are quantitative measures of estimation of each value: mass, length, force, energy. In the humanistic disciplines (history, philosophy, psychology) as well as art there are no quantitative criteria. This is similar to the question of how to measure beauty, love, friendship, democracy? The function named Gibbs energy defines ‘love’ between substances [and][possibly] people ... and is similar to Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be?’ of William Shakespeare.”

— Alec Groysman (2011), “Use of Art Media in Engineering and Scientific Education” (Ѻ) [2]