The development of our entire civilization is based on a simple logical triad: knowledge – skill – product. When applied to the development of mineral complex is transformed into a triune system consisting of mining sciences; mining technology (geotechnology); mining production.
Origin and formation of the system of knowledge about the Earth’s bowels, methods of obtaining minerals from them and methods of processing of these minerals can be safely attributed to the very beginning of the Stone Age.
Creation of the mountain sciences some authors attribute to the second half of the XVIII century, others – to the end of XIX – early XX century. Until that time in the literature used the collective term “mining art”, which was understood as a system of techniques and methods of scientific and practical activities associated with the extraction and processing of minerals. The origins of the mining sciences go back to the first scientific generalizations of the practice of mining.
Large researches in the field of mountain sciences are made in the second half of the XX century: in Germany patterns of distribution of pressure in a thickness of rocks around mined-out underground spaces in various mountain-geological conditions, interaction of rocks and supports are established; in Chile bases of mathematical theory of mountain pressure are created; in Australia, Belgium, Great Britain, Canada, the USA, France a number of concrete problems in mountain practice on the basis of studying laws of mountain-geological processes in rock masses, etc. are solved.
Since 1960s, according to the thematic plan of the former CMEA joint works on creation of research complexes of different equipment, improvement of methods of determination of stresses in rock masses, international scientific congresses (mining, oil, etc.) and conferences on discussion of research results in the field of mining subsoil were held.
Specificity of the phenomena they study is characteristic of the mining sciences. It consists in necessity of taking into account the following features: a large scale of events, caused by creation and simultaneous functioning of a large number of production facilities in conditions of non-renewability of mineral resources; significant spatial variability of properties of environment at development of subsoils (solid, liquid and gaseous) within the limits of influence of these facilities on the nature; probabilistic nature of parameters, system conditionality and information capacity of technological processes; conjugation at development of subsoils.
Such variety of factors stipulates the use of a large number of research methods in mining sciences: field observations, laboratory and pilot experiments, theoretical generalizations, graphoanalytic, seismoacoustic methods, statistical evaluations, analogies, physical, mathematical and economic-mathematical modeling and others.