Scientific dialogues for the instruction and entertainment of young people : in which the first principles of natural and experimental philosophy are fully explained and illustrated / by J. Joyce.

  • Jeremiah Joyce
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Scientific dialogues for the instruction and entertainment of young people : in which the first principles of natural and experimental philosophy are fully explained and illustrated / by J. Joyce. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    respective uses are unsatisfoctory and indistinct; and manyi endeavour, at a late period of life, to acquire a scientific and: exact knowledge of the effects that are produced by imple-- ments which are in everybody's hands, or that are absolutelyj necessary in the daily occupations of mankind. The Author trusts that the whole work will be found-] a complete compendium of natural and experimental phi- losophy, not only adapted to the understandings of young £ people, but well calculated also to convey that kind of fami- • liar instruction which is absolutely necessary, before a person n can attend public lectures in these branches of science witht advantage. If, says Mr. Edgeworth, speaking on this; subject, the lecturer does not communicate much of that 1 knowledge which he endeavours to explain, it is not to he* attributed either to his want of skill or to the insufficiency of' his apparatus, but to the novelty of the terms which he is.- obliged to use. Ignorance of the language in which any r science is taught is an insuperable bar to its being suddenly acquired: besides a precise knowledge of the meaning of i terms, we must have an instantaneous idea excited in ourr minds whenever they are repeated: and, as this can be ac- • quired only by practice, it is impossible that philosophical. lectures can be of much service to those who are not fami- • liarly acquainted with the technical language in which they are delivered. It is presumed that an attentive perusal of these Dialogues, . in which the principal and most common terms of science are '. carefully explained, and illustrated by a variety of familiar ■ examples, will be the means of obviating this objection with : respect to. persons who may be desirous of attending those : public philosophical lectures to which the inhabitants of the metropolis have almost constant access
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