58 COSMOS. 



of empirical knowledge by terms which admit either (i too 

 wide or too limited a definition of the ideas which they were 

 intended to convey, and arc, besides, objectionable from hav- 

 ing had a different signification in those classical languages of 

 antiquity from w^hich they have been borrowed. The terms 

 physiology, physics, natural history, geology, and geography 

 arose, and were commonly used, long before clear ideas were 

 entertained of the diversity of objects embraced by these 

 sciences, and consequently of their reciprocal limitation. Such 

 is the influence of long habit upon language, that by one of 

 the nations of Europe most advanced in civilization the word 

 " physic" is applied to medicine, while in a society of justly 

 deserved universal reputation, technical chemistry, geology, 

 and astronomy (purely experimental sciences) are comprised 

 under the head of " Philosophical Transactions." 



An attempt has often been made, and almost always in vain, 

 l:o substitute new and more appropriate terms for these ancient 

 designations, which, notwithstanding their undoubted vague- 

 ness, are now generally understood. These changes have been 

 proposed, for the most part, by those who have occupied them- 

 selves with the general classification of the various branches 

 of knowledge, from the first appearance of the great encyclo- 

 pedia [Margarita Fhilosophica) of Gregory Reisch,* prior of 

 the Chartreuse at Freiburg, toward the close of the fifteenth 

 century, to Lord Bacon, and from Bacon to D'Alembert ; and 

 in recent times to an eminent physicist, Andre Marie Ampere. t 



* The Margarita Philosophica of Gregory Reisch, prior of the Char- 

 treuse at Freiburg, first appeared under the following title: Epitome 

 omnis Philosopliice, alias Margarita Philosophica, tractans de omni generi 

 scibili. The Heidelberg edition (1486), and that of Strasburg (1504), 

 both bear this title, but the first part was suppressed in the Freiburg 

 edition of the same year, as well as in the twelve subsequent editions, 

 which succeeded one another, at short intervals, till 1.535. This work 

 exercised a great influence on the diffusion of mathematical and physic- 

 al sciences toward the beginning of the sixteenth century, and Ci»xslf>s, 

 the learned author of VApen^u Historique des MUhodes en GeomHrtc 

 (1837), has shown tlie great importance of Reisch's Encyclopedia in 

 the history of mathematics in the Middle Ages. I have had recoui-se 

 to a passage in the Margarita Philosophica, found only in the edition 

 of 1513, to elucidate the important question of the relations between 

 the statements of the geographer of Saint-Die, Hylacomilus (Martin 

 Waldseemiiller), the first who gave the name of America to the New 

 Continent, and those of Amerigo Vespucci, Rene, King of Jerusalem 

 and Duke of Lorraine, as also those contained in the celebrated editions 

 of Ptolemy of 1513 and 1522. See my Examen Critique de la G6o- 

 graphie du Nouveau Continent, et des Progres de V Astronomic Nautique 

 aux 15e et 16e Siecles, t. iv., p. 99-125. 



t Ampere, Essai snr la Phil, des Sciences, 1834, p. 25. Whewell, 



