Preface

century, could have experienced the almost daunting sight of the expanded spheres of the richly filled celestial and terrestrial spaces! Even ten years ago I lived, as my Cosmos The author refers to his multi-volume work, Kosmos - Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung (Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe). testifies at the end of the second volume (p. 398), in the deceptive hope of being able to unite the main results of specific observation—which will now fill three volumes—into a single final volume. It is easier, if one wishes to preserve some grace of form, to design a general world-portrait within previously recognized boundaries than it is to illuminate the individual elements, divided into diverse groups, upon which one believes the results are founded at a specific epoch of our scientific knowledge.

Upon the completion of a work carried out at least with persistent diligence, the author may be permitted to touch once more upon the question: whether his book on the Cosmos has remained true to the originally prescribed plan—I might say, to the limitations—which seemed advisable to him according to his individual view and his knowledge of the current state of acquired wisdom. I have striven in this book for: a thoughtful contemplation of the phenomena given by empirical experience Empirie: knowledge gained through observation and experiment rather than pure theory, and the assembly of that which is capable of development into a whole of nature. The generalization of views regarding the transitions of real, uninterruptedly active natural processes into one another (one of the most magnificent results of our age!) leads to the investigation of laws, where they are to be recognized or at least sensed. Clarity and liveliness of language in the objective representation of phenomena, as well as in the reflection of external nature upon the spiritual life in the Cosmos, upon the...