PREFACE 



THIS book is the outgrowth of a lecture course given by the 

 authors for several years* to undergraduate classes of the Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology, the chief aims of the course 

 being to furnish a broad general perspective of the evolution of 

 science, to broaden and deepen the range of the students' interests 

 and to encourage the practice of discriminating scientific reading. 



There are of course excellent treatises on the history of partic- 

 ular sciences, but these are as a rule addressed to specialists, and 

 concern themselves but little with the important relations of the 

 sciences one to another or to the general progress of civilization. 

 The present work aims to furnish the student and the general 

 reader with a concise account of the origin of that scientific knowl- 

 edge and that scientific method which, especially within the last 

 century, have come to have so important a share in shaping the 

 conditions and directing the activities of human life. The 

 specialist in any branch of science is finding it more and more 

 difficult to keep himself informed, even to the indispensable mini- 

 mum extent, as to current progress in his own field, and hence 

 his frequent neglect of all other branches than his own. 



It may reasonably be expected that some attention to the his- 

 tory of science on the part of students will give them a better 

 understanding of the broad tendencies which have determined the 

 general course of scientific progress, will enlarge their apprecia- 

 tion of the work of successive generations, and tend to guard them 

 against falling into those ancient pitfalls which have bordered 

 the paths of progress. In the words of Mach : 



There is no grander nor more intellectually elevating spectacle than that 

 of the utterances of the fundamental investigators in their gigantic power. 



* By the senior author since 1889. 

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