Science is useful to a Kung Fu man, because science can help the Kung Fu Man understand why he is doing what he is doing. There are a few areas of science that are real world useful to the Kung Fu Man.
Basic Physics – The laws of physics describe how a human body moves. Since the practice of Kung Fu involves moving the human body, the science of Physics can scientifically describe every movement of any Kung Fu form ever invented. Basic Physics will teach a Kung Fu Man all that is real world useful to know about the relationship between Physics and the practice of Kung Fu.
Some individuals might might be of the opinion that a full understanding of the relationship between Kung Fu and Science would require advanced Physics. Advanced Physics in this situation would be taking things like friction into account when calculating the Physics of a some body movement.
While knowledge of the complete Physics of some body movement might be interesting or helpful to an individual devoted to knowledge and complete scientific accuracy, for the average person, anything more than Basic Physics will most likely not be of any benefit.
Geometry – The human body is a complex shaped machine. It is easier to understand that complex machine by breaking it up into it’s component parts and understanding the less complex component parts. The less complex component parts can all be treated as one of the simple shapes that are discussed in the field of Geometry.
Trigonometry – The science of Trigonometry is devoted to the properties of triangles. Triangles are used to solve physics problems such as determining the movements of the human body, so it is necessary to learn Trigonometry in order to calculate the Physics of the movement of the human body.
The construction of the human body is heavily dependent on triangles. The familiarity with triangles that is provided by Trigonometry can provide many different insights into the practice of Kung Fu.
Mathematics – Learning Trigonometry and Physics requires a certain level of Mathematics. It is not necessary for the Kung Fu Man to understand the Mathematics in detail in order to benefit from learning and applying Trigonometric or Physics principles to the movement of the human body. In most cases a useful Trigonometric or Physics conclusion about a movement of the body can be reached by knowing only if a specific Mathematics value is low or high.
——————
Many individuals feel that scientific knowledge is useless to a fighter. These individuals might say that there is no time to think during a fight, so thinking about the science of what is going on in a fight is useless. These individuals have a point. There is not really time to think about science during a fight.
What these individuals fail to consider though, is the fact that any kind of knowledge that a person learns will eventually become a part of them or second nature to them. That is how knowledge of science works with Kung Fu. The individual will not think of the science of what he is doing during his Kung Fu practice. The science knowledge will be so familiar that it comes into the mind without having to think about it.
The knowledge will feel like your subconscious talking to you while you go about doing all the other things you do in your daily life. You don’t stop your daily activities to listen to your subconscious. So why would a Kung Fu Man need to stop fighting to listen to his subconscious talk about the science of what he is doing in the fight?