Principal epochs of the progressive development and extension of the idea of the Cosmos as an organic whole.

The history of the physical contemplation of the universe is the history of the recognition of nature as a whole; it is the recital of the endeavours of man to conceive and comprehend the concurrent action of natural forces on the earth and in the regions of space: it accordingly marks the epochs of progress in the generalisation of physical views. It is that part of the history of our world of thought which relates to objects perceived by the senses, to the form of conglomerated matter, and to the forces by which it is pervaded.

In the first portion of this work, in the section on the limitation and scientific treatment of a physical description of the universe, I have endeavoured to point out the true relation which the separate branches of natural knowledge bear to that description, and to shew that the science of the Cosmos derives from those separate studies only the materials for its scientific foundation. The history of the recognition or knowledge of the universe as a whole,—of which history I now propose to present the leading ideas, and which, for the sake of brevity, I here term sometimes the “history of the Cosmos,” and sometimes the “history of the physical contemplation of the universe,”—must not, therefore, be confounded with the “history of the natural sciences,” as it is given in several of our best elementary books of physics, or in those of the morphology of plants and animals.