Table of Contents

I. Cosmogony. 1. The Book of Genesis. 2. Aristotle. 3. Aristarchus and Archimedes. 4. Copernicus. 5. Galileo Galilei. 6. Newton. 7. Laplace. 8. Foucault, Stokes, Bunsen and Kirchhoff. 9. Einstein, Minkowski, Eddington. Relativity. II. The Atomic Theory. 10. Lucretius. 11. Alchemy, the Parent of Chemistry. 12. Lavoisier and the Rise of Modern Chemistry. 13. Chemistry and the Atomic Theory. 14. The Combination of Gases. 15. Atoms and Molecules. 16. The Periodic Law. 17. Electrochemistry. 18. The Ionic Dissociation Theory. 19. The Electric Properties of Gases and the Discovery of Particles Smaller than Chemical Atoms. 20. Positive Rays and Isotopes. 21. The Nature of X-Rays and the Discovery of Atomic Numbers. 22. Radioactivity and the Structure of the Atom. III. The Theory of Evolution. 23. Aristotle. 24. The Dark Ages: Pliny. 25. Mediaeval Allegories: Physiologus. 26. Hooke: An Early Microscopist. 27. Species: The Linnaean System of Classification. 28. New Theories of Evolution: Lamarck. 29. Evolution in Geology: Lyell. 30. Organic Chemistry: Wohler. 31. Pasteur and the Question of Spontaneous Generation. 32. The Origin of Species. 33. The Laws of Heredity: Mendel. 34. The Chromosome Theory of Heredity. 35. Present Progress. Index