VI PREFACE 



interest in this most fascinating field of knowledge is steadily 

 decreasing. 



The aims of a text in General Science, therefore, appear to 

 the author to be at least fourfold : to awaken in the student an 

 interest in, and love for, science; to provide him early in his 

 studies with a fund of useful information regarding scientific 

 matters; to fit him for successfully negotiating such courses in 

 the special sciences as he may later elect; and last, but by no 

 means least, to initiate him into the laboratory method of solv- 

 ing new problems and thereby to develop his powers of observ- 

 ation, reasoning and judgment. An experimental course in the 

 general principles underlying all science seems designed to 

 most effectively accomplish these ends, provided the principles 

 are adhered to and the teaching of the elementary parts of the 

 special sciences avoided. 



When the basic principles of the technical sciences are 

 analyzed they are found to be almost entirely physical and 

 chemical in their nature, since change in form, position, or 

 composition is the rule in all earthly things. Astronomy, 

 Geology, and Biology, with all their subsidiary divisions and 

 ramifications, are merely studies in the application of these 

 principles to special phases of nature. The theme of this book, 

 therefore, is matter as it is affected by energy in its manifold 

 forms. In order to make the contents of the course intelligible 

 to the beginning student, no previous knowledge of the subject 

 on his part is assumed, and the experiments and references are 

 concerned with things with which he is already familiar or can 

 examine for himself without special effort. In selecting these, 

 however, the whole field of science has been laid under tribute 

 but with no attempt to classify the matter into the usual formal 

 divisions; indeed, the effort has been to avoid this. At the 

 same time, the work forms a connected whole by the adoption 

 of a related sequence which develops naturally and which is 

 further knit together by numerous cross-references. The 



