CHAPTER V 



THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 



FRANCIS BACON 



THE preceding chapter has shown that there is a 

 continuity in the development of single sciences. The 

 astronomy, or the chemistry, or the mathematics, 

 of one period depends so directly on the respective 

 science of the foregoing period, that one feels justi- 

 fied in using the term " growth," or " evolution," to 

 describe their progress. Now a vital relationship can 

 be observed not only among different stages of the 

 same science, but also among the different sciences. 

 Physics, astronomy, and chemistry have much in 

 common ; geometry, trigonometry, arithmetic, and 

 algebra are called " branches " of mathematics ; zo- 

 ology and botany are biological sciences, as having 

 to do with living species. In the century following 

 the death of Copernicus, two great scientists, Bacon 

 and Descartes, compared all knowledge to a tree, 

 of which the separate sciences are branches. They 

 thought of all knowledge as a living organism with 

 an interconnection or continuity of parts, and a ca- 

 pability of growth. 



By the beginning of the seventeenth century the 

 sciences were so considerable that in the interest of 

 further progress a comprehensive view of the tree 

 of knowledge, a survey of the field of learning, was 

 needed. The task of making this survey was under- 

 taken by Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam (1561-1626). 



