ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



The Study of Natural History 1 



By J. Arthur Thomson, M.A., Regius Professor of Natural History, 

 University of Aberdeen. 



It lias often been pointed out that the term " natural history " is in 

 itself an index to the progress of science. Originally it was used to 

 include the study of the whole outer world, human affairs alone 

 excepted. At a later date it became equivalent to what is now called 

 " natural science," the physical and chemical sciences having specialised 

 off. More recently it became a synonym for zoology, as apart from 

 botany, and this remains the most frequent usage. But there is an 

 even more specific use of the term — for the study of the life of animals 

 as it is lived in nature, for the study of their social and family life, 

 their habits and inter-relations, in other words, as a synonym for what 

 some would call " animal bionomics." 



It will be admitted by all that the specialising of scientific inquiry 

 suggested by the gradual narrowing of the term " natural history " has 

 been as valuable as it has been inevitable, for there is no one now who 

 either would or could take all nature for his province as men like 

 Buffon did. At the same time, it may be allowed, even by those who 

 fully recognise the value of specialism, that the old term " natural 

 history " strikes two notes which both teachers and students are 

 nowadays occasionally in danger of losing. 



The Unity of Science. 



The first note, if 1 have heard it aright, suggests the unity of 

 science. For, after all, there is but one great subject of concrete study 

 — the order of nature : and, although we split up the study of this 

 into sciences and sub-sciences, we are simply making an adaptation to 

 our limited intelligence — -an adaptation which inevitably becomes 

 fallacious if it lead us to forget that, without co-operation and correlation 



1 An Introductory Address delivered at the University of Aberdeen. 

 30 — nat. sc. — vol. xiv. no. 88. 437 



