SUCTION 20 STUDIES PREPARATORY TO ALL INVESTIGATIONS. 173 



Is it a question of town-planning? Local climate, geography, 

 geology, mineral wealth, configuration of district and town, 

 fauna and flora, surface soil, physical, economic, and other 

 relations of locality to neighbouring localities and nearest large 

 towns, building materials, roads, ventilation, heating, and light- 

 ing of buildings, water-supply, sanitation, hygiene, open spaces, 

 outdoor and indoor amusements, schools, public buildings, 

 churches, theatres and art institutions generally, industries and 

 commerce, past of town, customs and traditions of townsmen, 

 reconciliation of past and present ideals in town-planning 

 almost all of these can be examined in a fairly scientific 

 spirit. ' 



In science in the narrower sense the same possibilities are 

 emerging. In studying such a subject as light, for instance, 

 not only can, besides special aspects, the entire field be covered, 

 but serious notice can be taken of the affiliated etheorological 

 or corpuscular sciences of heat, electricity, magnetism, radiation, 

 and even chemistry, without passing over the practical problems 

 of indoor and outdoor lighting. In this manner, much of the 

 crudity inseparable from earlier attempts can be successfully 

 avoided. So, too, the geologist may aim at being thorough, 

 taking effective note, primarily through the existence of a 

 number of somewhat highly developed sciences, not only of 

 the sheer spatial and chronological succession of rocks and 

 their component parts and contents, but of the factors respon- 

 sible for these effects of gravity, pressure, heat and cold, 

 fire and frost, moisture and dessication, lightning, atmospheric 

 and water currents and water generally, chemical changes in 

 rocks, subsidence and raising of land, earthquakes, volcanoes, 

 and hot springs, age of the rocks, position and distribution of 

 strata on the globe, far-reaching climatic changes in the course 

 of the earth's history, plants and animals and their actions and 

 remains, human interference, and the like. In a similar way 

 the meteorologist very largely depends on a multitude of data 

 collected by sister sciences. The chemist also can study the 

 important mechanical, physical, crystallographic, and vital 

 aspects in connection with his department of knowledge. The 

 biologist, too, in striving to understand the nature of life and 

 of life forms, may call to his aid almost scores of passably 

 developed sciences. Lastly, in the future the various mental 

 and social sciences will be as readily and as profitably utilised 

 in education, aBsthetics, morals, religion, civics, and politics. 

 In any case, the day appears to have definitely arrived when 

 narrow specialisation, except in rare instances, is becoming a 

 grave offence against present-day methodological demands. 



1 A brilliant example of town-planning may be found in Town Planning 

 towards City Development. A Report to the Durbar of Indore. 2 vols. 1918. 

 l>y Patrick Geddes. 



