17 Feb. 1815

Didacologia

Ch. Art & Science Division

21

Of these eight abstractions, six, viz. 1. Place; 2. Motion; (viz. relative motion) 3. Time; 4. Number; 5. Figure; 6. Quantity - in a word, all but vacuity or void space and rest, have furnished so many distinguishable branches of science - branches, let us say, of Choristoscopic Somatology, each of them already furnished with a separate name, how far soever from being uniformly apposite and expressive.

I. Sciences having for their Subject the Predicament of Place.

Topography a term confined in its customary application to small portions of the surface of our earth though with equal original propriety applicable to any portion or portions of the whole universe. Chorography, a term not much in use, but, when in use, applied to portions larger than Topography is commonly applied to. Geography - a term exclusively and necessarily as its etymology shows, confined to this our earth, and subject to that limitation, applicable to any portions, so they be not so small as that the propriety of the application shall find on the part of Topography a ground or pretence for disputing it.

By Uranography or rather /still better/ by Uranognosy, rather than Astronomy, may that branch of Topography, taken in its largest sense, which remains after the subtraction of Geography be designated. Uranognosy rather than Uranography; because, while on our earth the situations of its several parts, with relation to each other when measured upon a large scale, are never observed to undergo any considerable change, those of the bodies of which the whole universe is composed are as far as observation or indication may be depended upon - are all with relation to each other in a state of constant relative motion; and accordingly their relative situations undergoing continual change.

Uranognosy, or even Uranography, in preference to Astronomy, because, by the word Astronomy, a needless separation is made of the bodies which, whilst some perceptibly, others imperceptibly, are continually moving in their boundless field.

27