On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences

Abstract

When Mary Somerville began her second book her own ideas of what properly constituted ‘the physical sciences’ were clear, but a definition of the term was only then being formulated by scientific usage. The decisions she made about material to be included under that rubric were influential in characterizing it and were unchallenged. Today a sentence from her work is cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, under the second meaning of the word ‘physics’, as an example of 1834 usage. Her view of the compass of physical science was a modern one in the early 1830s. She excluded from consideration chemistry and biology and directed her attention to a ‘group of sciences, treating of the properties of matter and energy . . . ’.¹ Her plan is nowhere explicitly stated, but the book itself and a sentence from her memoirs confirms it: ‘There were many subjects which which I was only partially acquainted, and others of which I had no previous knowledge, but which required to be carefully investigated, so I had to consult a variety of authors, British and foreign’.² The novelty of her work gave her a latitude of choice that future authors rarely enjoyed.