INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

 By Professor J. ARTHUR THOMSON 



WAS it not the great philosopher and mathematician 

 Leibnitz who said that the more knowledge advances 

 the more it becomes possible to condense it into little 

 books? Now this "Outline of Science" is certainly not a little 

 book, and yet it illustrates part of the meaning of Leibnitz's 

 wise saying. For here within reasonable compass there is a 

 library of little books an outline of many sciences. 



It will be profitable to the student in proportion to the 

 discrimination with which it is used. For it is not in the least 

 meant to be of the nature of an Encyclopedia, giving condensed 

 and comprehensive articles with a big full stop at the end of 

 each. Nor is it a collection of "primers," beginning at the very 

 beginning of each subject and working methodically onwards. 

 That is not the idea. 



What then is the aim of this book? It is to give the intel- 

 ligent student-citizen, otherwise called "the man in the street," a 

 bunch of intellectual keys by which to open doors which have been 

 hitherto shut to him, partly because he got no glimpse of the 

 treasures behind the doors, and partly because the portals were 

 made forbidding by an unnecessary display of technicalities. 

 Laying aside conventional modes of treatment and seeking rather 

 to open up the subject as one might on a walk with a friend, the 

 work offers the student what might be called informal introduc- 

 tions to the various departments of knowledge. To put it in 

 another way, the articles are meant to be clues which the reader 

 may follow till he has left his starting point very far behind. 

 Perhaps when he has gone far on his own he will not be ungrate- 

 ful to the simple book of "instructions to travellers" which this 



