The Evolution of the Sciences 



no provision exists for physical chemistry or 

 bacteriology. 



We see that the frontiers of the sciences were 

 not founded on logic, but, like the frontiers of 

 nations, have been constituted gradually. In 

 the same way and this second point has been 

 established to-day by numerous researches 

 the content of each science has collected round 

 formulae which had a utilitarian or religious 

 aim. Even mathematics, whose majestic har- 

 mony appears as the triumph of human reason, 

 had the same humble beginnings. The laws of 

 number, the forerunners of arithmetic and 

 algebra, were discovered gropingly and by the 

 inductive methods now employed by the ex- 

 perimental sciences. Astronomy had its origin 

 in the observations of shepherds and sailors. 

 Geometry developed out of the practice of 

 land - surveying in Egypt, where the Nile 

 obliterated year after year the boundaries of 

 the fields, and the rules of the " Harpedon- 

 aptes," " those who attach the line/' gradu- 

 ally grew into the theorems classified by 

 Euclid. Physics and chemistry saw the light 



in the workshop of the artisan, and zoology 



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