PREFACE 



THE history of science has something to offer to 

 the humblest intelligence. It is a means of impart- 

 ing a knowledge of scientific facts and principles to 

 unschooled minds. At the same time it affords a 

 simple method of school instruction. Those who 

 understand a business or an institution best, as a 

 contemporary writer on finance remarks, are those 

 who have made it or grown up with it, and the next 

 best thing is to know how it has grown up, and then 

 watch or take part in its actual working. Generally 

 speaking, we know best what we know in its origins. 



The history of science is an aid in scientific research. 

 It places the student in the current of scientific 

 thought, and gives him a clue to the purpose and 

 necessity of the theories he is required to master. It 

 presents science as the constant pursuit of truth 

 rather than the formulation of truth long since re- 

 vealed; it shows science as progressive rather than 

 fixed, dynamic rather than static, a growth to which 

 each may contribute. It does not paralyze the self- 

 activity of youth by the record of an infallible past. 



It is only by teaching the sciences in their histori- 

 cal development that the schools can be true to the 

 two principles of modern education, that the sciences 

 should occupy the foremost place in the curriculum 

 and that the individual mind in its evolution should 

 rehearse the history of civilization. 



The history of science should be given a larger 

 place than at present in general history ; for, as 



