bigelow] NATURE-STUDY AND SCIENCE I 5 



erallv accepted definition that " science is organized knowledge," 

 from which it follows that natural science is organized knowledge 

 concerning natural objects and processes. Note that organiza- 

 tion is the essence of this definition, as of those above. ' Science 

 differs from mere knowledge by being a knowledge both of facts, 

 and of their relations to each other. The mere random, hap- 

 hazard accumulation of facts, then, is not science ; and the per- 

 ception and conception of their natural relations to each other, the 

 comprehension of these relations under general laws, and the 

 organization of facts and laws into one body, the parts of which 

 are seen to be subservient to each other, is Science." This clear 

 and concise statement by the late Professor Joseph Payne, of Lon- 

 don, in a lecture on '* True Foundation of Science-Teaching " 

 (1872) will. I think, meet with the approval of all scientific men 

 who use the word science in its strict sense, as distinguished from 

 the loose popular usage of the word to mean simply any grouping 

 of facts about natural objects and processes. 



The above definitions of science as organized knowledge may 

 be well illustrated by a brief examination of the old-time natural 

 history. This originally dealt with all phases of nature, but in 

 the last century came to lie commonly understood as limited to 

 living nature — plants and animals. For our purposes let us 

 briefly consider the animal side of natural history. Historians of 

 science have written that the foundations of the science of 

 zooloo-v were laid in the latter half of the eighteenth century. 

 This does not mean that in this century men first began to study 

 and to collect facts about animals, for long before Aristotle many 

 observers of animal life in its familiar forms accumulated much 

 knowledge about animals, and Aristotle and later naturalists 

 added great contributions. But all this mass of facts about ani- 

 mals lacked, before the middle of the eighteenth century, that 

 organization under principles and generalizations which is charac- 

 teristic of the modern science of zoology. Zoology, then, is not 

 simply the study of animals, as it is often loosely defined : but it 

 is an organization of knowledge concerning animals, and the 

 founding of the science in the eighteenth century was not so much 

 due to discovery of numerous new facts as to comparison and 

 organization of facts which had been accumulating throughout 

 many centuries. And so we have come to distinguish between 

 modern organized knowledge under zoology and the former tin- 



