Natural science

“ Natural science takes the second place. In many respects it is co-ordinate with history. The object-world, which is so interesting, so informing, and so intimately interwoven with the needs, labors, and progress of men, furnishes the second great constituent of education for all children. Botany, zoology, and the other natural sciences, taken as a unit, constitute the field of nature apart from man. They furnish us an understanding of the varied objects and complex phenomena of nature. ”

“ I do not mean the mechanical sciences alone, physical astronomy and the like, though these undoubtedly have a prerogative value as the instruments of such a culture; but the like effect will be promoted by the exact and solid study of any portion of the circle of natural sciences; botany, comparative anatomy, geology, chemistry, for instance. But I say the exact and solid knowledge; not a mere verbal knowledge, but a knowledge which is real in its character, though it may be elementary and limited in its extent. ”

“ Here again we are impressed and even daunted by the immense Universe to be explored. "What we know, is a point to what we do not know." Open any recent journal of science, and weigh the problems suggested concerning Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, Physiology, Geology, and judge whether the interest of natural science is likely to be soon exhausted.
Passing by many particulars of the discipline of nature, we must not omit to specify two.
The exercise of the Will or the lesson of power is taught in every event. ”

“ Can it be maintained of a science, which requires for its successful prosecution an intimate acquaintance with Chemistry, Natural Philosophy and Astronomy,—with the details and views of Zoology, Botany, and Mineralogy, and which connects these different departments of knowledge in a most interesting and striking manner,—that it is of no value? ”

“ Real natural science dates from the second half of the fifteenth century, and thence onward it has advanced with constantly increasing rapidity. The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms—these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last four hundred years. ”

“ First, natural science served—if we overlook the hasty identification of mind and matter which had its origin in natural science—as a shining and fruitful example to psychology. ”

“ From the group of the natural sciences there emerges into prominent place the princely science of zoology. As was said before, it is the central subject in all that advance in the knowledge of organic nature to which reference has been made. It is best fitted, it seems to me, to give to the students in our colleges and universities an idea of the results of the activity of the nature seekers. Its sister science, botany, which runs parallel to it, deals with similar phenomena in plants. Still, it is only among animals that we find nervous responses tolerably well developed. ”

“ Natural science—or, more definitely, knowledge of the physical world with the aid of and in the sense of theoretical natural science—means the reduction of all change in the physical world to movements of atoms produced independently of time by their central forces; or, in other words, natural science is the resolution of natural processes into the mechanics of atoms. ”

“ Did water first surround the glowing orb as a heated vapour? Did clouds first descend upon it like a fiery rain-storm? Suppose some sentient creature floating through ether to look upon the unformed world,—how wild, how weird must have been the spectacle! How different from what earth and ocean may appear to any similar Intelligence now.
Science discoursing upon such topics is more poetical than the most sublime poetry. And the science that does speak of [Pg 358] them is the widest of all sciences, After certain cycles of ages, the Biologist hands us over to the Mineralogist and the Chemist. ”

“ The imposing success that belongs to natural science is absent: we fall short of the unchallengeable unanimity of the Biologists on fundamentals. The experimental method with its sure repetitions cannot be applied to our subject-matter. ”

“ These researches have developed the science of physiology, or the laws of bodily action, on many accounts the most modern and extensive of our new acquisitions of natural learning. Through these studies we have come to know something of the laws or principles by which life is handed on from generation to generation, and by which the gradations of structure have been advanced from the simple creatures which appear like bits of animated jelly to the body and mind of man.
The greatest contribution which modern naturalists have made to knowledge concerns the origin of organic species. ”

“ Indeed, if at the present moment we run over the names distinguished in the several sciences into which Natural Knowledge may be divided—in Physics, in Chemistry, in Botany, in Zoology—we find but few investigators who can be said to have thoroughly mastered the whole range of any one of them. ”

“ A LOBSTER; OR, THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY.
Natural History is the name familiarly applied to the study of the properties of such natural bodies as minerals, plants, and animals; the sciences which embody the knowledge man has acquired upon these subjects are commonly termed Natural Sciences, in contradistinction to other, so-called “physical,” sciences; and those who devote themselves especially to the pursuit of such sciences have been, and are, commonly termed “Naturalists.” ”

“ The aphorism "Nature abhors close fertilization," and the demonstration of the principle, belong to our age, and to Mr. Darwin. To have originated this, and also the principle of Natural Selection—the truthfulness and importance of which are evident the moment it is apprehended—and to have applied these principles to the system of Nature in such a manner as to make, within a dozen years, a deeper impression upon natural history than has been made since Linnæus, is ample title for one man's fame. ”

“ Great as have been the advances made by all the three branches of science, of old included under the title of natural history, there can be no doubt that zoology and botany have grown in an enormously greater ratio than mineralogy, and hence, as I suppose, the name of “natural history” has gradually become more and more definitely attached to these prominent divisions of the subject, and by “naturalist” people have meant more [Pg 353] and more distinctly to imply a student of the structure and functions of living beings. ”

“ All that can be ascertained concerning the structure, succession of conditions, actions, and position in space of the earth, is the matter of fact of its natural history. But, as in biology, there remains the matter of reasoning from these facts to their causes, which is just as much science as the other, and indeed more ”

“ The old problem of Nature versus nurture that meets us in studying the life history of any organism becomes especially interesting in dealing with the biography of men of eminence. Are their achievements the inevitable expression of the natural forces innate in them at birth, or the product of environmental influences, or some resultant of these two factors? And how much may we in each case assign to one factor or to the other? ”

“ A science that is yet only in its cradle, like the morphology of organisms, will have many important changes to undergo before it can venture to claim for its general propositions the rank of absolute and unexceptionable natural laws. ”

“ With this method of study in the organic kingdoms we are familiar under the names of physiological botany and physiological zoölogy, which concern themselves with anatomy, organography, and morphology, and with the processes of growth, nutrition, and decay in organized existences. The natural philosophy of the inorganic world investigates the motions and the energies of the heavenly bodies, and then, coming down to our planet, considers all the phenomena which come under the head of dynamic or physic, as well as those of chemistry. ”

“ There is no study better fitted than that of geology to impress upon men of general culture that conviction of the unbroken sequence of the order of natural phenomena, throughout the duration of the universe, which is the great, and perhaps the most important, effect of the increase of natural knowledge. ”

“ These general properties of species will, I think, be admitted by all naturalists as based on nature, and absolutely necessary to the existence of natural history as a science, independently of any hypotheses as to the possible changes of specific forms in the lapse of time. ”

“ The last two chapters do not properly belong to the special course. Chapter VIII is a lecture delivered in the spring of 1920 before the Chemical Society of the students of the Imperial College of Science and Technology. It has been appended here as conveniently summing up and applying the doctrine of the book for an audience with one definite type of outlook.
This volume on ‘the Concept of Nature’ forms a companion book to my previous work An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge. Either book can be read independently, but they supplement each other. ”

“ The understanding leads all other predicates pertaining to the nature of matter back to this, and thus natural science is throughout either a pure or an applied doctrine of motion. ”

“ The theory of these effects constitutes what may be termed a primary science, upon which the exact knowledge of particular appearances as well as terrestrial substances entirely depends. This description of science may fairly be considered as appertaining to physics; but does not all physical knowledge, in which no system is admitted, form part of the History of Nature? ”

“ On the morphological side we have the doctrine of evolution applied to living forms, and especially as definitely put forward by the theory of the origin of species by natural selection; while on the physiological side we have the doctrine of the conservation of energy, and its extension to the play of forces in living organisms. ”

“ The sciences based upon this objective study of Nature are denominated Natural Sciences; and because they lisp the first syllables of Nature's message to man, they should be his primary teachers. It is by their aid that the universal message of God to man must be read. They form, as it were, a public highway leading from Nature to God. ”

“ The publication of 'The Principles of Geology,' in 1830, constituted an epoch in geological science. But it also constituted an epoch in the modern history of the doctrines of evolution, by raising in the mind of every intelligent reader this question: If natural causation is competent to account for the not-living part of our globe, why should it not account for the living part? ”

“ To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without—our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibres, are present not in the human body alone: ”

“ To many, this doctrine of Natural Selection, or 'the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life,' seems so simple, when once clearly stated, and so consonant with known facts and received principles, that they have difficulty in conceiving how it can constitute a great step in the progress of science. Such is often the case with important discoveries, but in order to assure ourselves that the doctrine was by no means obvious, we have only to refer back to the writings of skilful naturalists who attempted in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, to theorise on this subject, before the invention of this new method of explaining how certain forms are supplanted by new ones, and in what manner these last are selected out of innumerable varieties, and rendered permanent. ”

“ To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. ”

“ It is of course advantageous in some ways to have agreement as to the limitations of ecology, or any science, but even the more exact sciences seem to fare little better, as is shown by the following statement: “It is not long since I heard a university professor begin a lecture on physics somewhat in this way: ‘Physics is the science of matter and energy. ”

“ But many still identify 'Nature' with a limited portion of that great system, and even retain for it a special application to the animals and plants of this earth and their immediate surroundings. Thus we have the term 'natural history' and the French term 'les sciences naturelles' limited to the study of the more immediate and concrete forms of animals, plants, and crystals. ”

“ All the varied phenomena of nature; the animals, the plants, the minerals, assume different phases, according to the means and acquirements of the observer, the progress of science, and the climate under which the descriptions are given. As science advances, the descriptions of naturalists admit of modification and addition, in order to keep pace with the progress of discovery ”

“ It might even be said that it embraces all human knowledge. Thus, the constitution of the human mind, and the structure of the human body, as well as its healthy [Pg 30] and morbid phenomena, together with the means of regulating the former and of counteracting the latter, may certainly be included in it.
Natural history, however, in its more limited acceptation, may be considered as comprehending the three great kingdoms of Nature,—the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal,—the sciences treating of which are named Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology. ”