Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

  • Sidney Webb
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/284 (page 6)
    of the several sciences by an imaginative vision of the earth on which we live. To the astronomer the earth, with all that is in it or upon it, is only an oblate spheroid” spinning in the void of space, merely one of the heavenly bodies”, all of which have to be studied in their shapes and sizes and proper motions” and in their relations to one another. To other scientists the sphere of explora¬ tion is the earth’s crust and all that is in it or upon it, so far as our means of knowing extend. Let us re¬ gard the earth as an onion, made up of a series of coats. Think away all except the solid crust itself (the lithosphere), and you have left the special sub¬ ject-matter of geology (including geography, petro¬ logy, mineralogy, crystallography, etc.). Ignore the solid ground, and concentrate attention on the waters that envelop the earth (the hydrosphere), often penetrating far into the solid crust, and mixing upward with the air; this is the subject-matter of oceanography or hydraulics. But there is another envelope (the atmosphere), about which we are steadily acquiring knowledge; this envelope, inter¬ mixing with both earth and water, is the subject- matter of meteorology. Leave out of your mental vision both the solid crust and its two fluid envel¬ opes, and fix your attention entirely on the swarms of living organisms that inhabit them (the biosphere); this is the subject-matter of biology, which may be divided, if desired, not only into bacteriology, botany, and zoology, but also into a fourth special¬ isation called psychology. We carry this vision two