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 XI. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



A CLASSIFICATION OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES *. 

 BY T. STERRY HUNT, LL.D., F.R.S. 

 r PO frame a rational classification of the natural sciences, and 

 -*- to define their mutual relations, has often been attempted. 

 The present writer, in an essay read before the National Academy 

 of Sciences in 1881, and published in the Philosophical Magazine 

 for October of that year under the title of " The Domain of Phy- 

 siology," suggested the basis of such a scheme, and now, at the 

 suggestion of some of his readers, ventures to embody in a concise 

 and tabulated form the views then and there enunciated, in the hope 

 that other students may find it not unworthy of their notice. 



The study of material nature, or of the physical universe (for the 

 terms natural and physical are synonymous), constitutes what the 

 older scholars correctly and comprehensively termed Physics, and 

 presents itself in a two-fold aspect ; first, as descriptive, and second 

 as philosophical — a distinction embodied in the terms Natural 

 History and Natural Philosophy, or, more concisely, in the words 

 Pl^siography and Physiology. The latter word has, from the time 

 of Aristotle, been employed in this general sense to designate the 

 philosophical study of nature, and will be so used in the present 

 classification. 



The world of nature is divided into the inorganic or mineral o- 

 gical and the organic or biological kingdoms ; the divisions of the 

 latter into vegetable and animal being a subordinate one. The 

 natural history or physiography of the inorganic kingdom takes 

 cognizance of the sensible characters of mineral species, and gives 

 us descriptive and systematic mineralogy; which have hitherto 

 been restricted to native species, but in a wider sense include all 

 artificial species as well. The study of native mineral species, their 

 aggregations, and their arrangement as constituents of our planet, 

 is the object of geognosy and physical geography. The physiography 

 of other worlds gives rise to descriptive astronomy. 



The natural philosophy of the inorganic kingdom, or mineral 

 physiology, is concerned, in the first place, with what is generally 

 called dynamics or physics ; including the phenomena of ordinary 

 motion, sound, radiant energy, electricity, and magnetism. Dy- 

 namics in the abstract regard matter in general, without relation 

 to species ; chemism generates therefrom mineralogical, or so-called 

 chemical species ; which, theoretically, may be supposed to be 

 formed from a single elemental substance or materia prima. 

 Dynamics and chemistry built up the inorganic world, giving rise 

 to the science of geogeny and, as applied to other worlds, to 

 theoretical astronomy. 



Proceeding to the organic kingdom, its physiographic study 



* Communicated by the Author, having been read in General Session 

 at Minneapolis meeting of Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci., Aug. 1883. 



