Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 40706-h.htm or 40706-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40706/40706-h/40706-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40706/40706-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://archive.org/details/introductiontohi00libb Transcriber's note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. Some changes have been made. They are listed at the end of the text, apart from some changes of puctuation in the Index. Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Characters enclosed by curly braces are subscripts (example: H{2}O). Dalton's symbols for the elements have been represented as follows: White circle ( ) Hydrogen Circle with vertical bar (|) Nitrogen Circle with central dot (·) Oxygen Black cirle (*) Carbon AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE by WALTER LIBBY, M.A., Ph.D. Professor of the History of Science in the Carnegie Institute of Technology [Illustration] Boston New York Chicago Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge Copyright, 1917, by Walter Libby All Rights Reserved The Riverside Press Cambridge. Massachusetts U . S . A TO MY STUDENTS OF THE LAST TWELVE YEARS IN THE CHICAGO AND PITTSBURGH DISTRICTS THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED IN FURTHERANCE OF THE ENDEAVOR TO INCULCATE A DEMOCRATIC CULTURE, EVER MINDFUL OF THE DAILY TASK, NOT ALTOGETHER IGNORANT OF THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE PAST PREFACE The history of science has something to offer to the humblest intelligence. It is a means of imparting a knowledge of scientific facts and principles to unschooled minds. At the same time it affords a simple method of school instruction. Those who understand a business or an institution best, as a contemporary writer on finance remarks, are those who have made it or grown up with it, and the next best thing is to know how it has grown up, and then watch or take part in its actual working. Generally speaking, we know best what we know in its origins. The history of science is an aid in scientific research. It places the student in the current of scientific thought, and gives him a clue to the purpose and necessity of the theories he is required to master. It presents science as the constant pursuit of truth rather than the formulation of truth long since revealed; it shows science as progressive rather than fixed, dynamic rather than static, a growth to which each may contribute. It does not paralyze the self-activity of youth by the record of an infallible past.