FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS 3 
3. Relation of Botany to Other Sciences. It is not 
possible to study any one science in disregard of all the 
others. Plants are related not only to man, but to the 
air and soil in which they live; their life processes 
are chemical or physical in nature; they are distributed 
in space over the earth's surface, and in time, in the 
layers of rocks of various geological ages; and so the 
study of botany touches meteorology, chemistry, physics, 
geography, climatology, geology, the science of soils, and 
other branches of science. 
4. Biology. The science which deals with life in 
general is biology, 'and all the sciences which deal with 
living things are biological sciences. Zoology, human 
anatomy and physiology, bacteriology, and botany are 
some (but not all) of the biological sciences, and they are 
all more or less closely related to each other. There is 
no hard and fast boundary line between any of the 
sciences; they represent, rather, different points of 
view of nature. But it is convenient to subdivide our 
knowledge more or less arbitrarily for purposes of study. 
6. Systematic Botany. Just as the various "sciences" 
or "knowledges" represent different points of view of 
nature, so each science may have subdivisions, repre- 
senting different points of view of its phenomena. The 
study of plants for the primary purpose of ascertaining 
their genetic relationships is systematic botany. The 
ultimate aim of this study is to disclose the course of 
the evolution of the plant kingdom; this aim can never 
be fully realized, because most of the necessary data 
have been lost forever in the course of the geological 
evolution of the earth. Systematic botany includes: 
(a) Classification, or the arrangement of the various 
