Physics, or PHYSICAL SCIENCE

Physics, or PHYSICAL SCIENCE (Gr. physikos, 'natural'), comprehends in its widest sense all that is classed under the various branches of mixed or applied mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, and natural history, which branches include the whole of our knowledge regarding the material universe. In its narrower sense it is equivalent to Natural Philosophy (q.v.), which until of late years was the term more commonly used in Great Britain, and denotes all knowledge of the properties of bodies as bodies, or the science of phenomena unaccompanied by essential change in the objects; while chemistry is concerned with the composition of bodies, and the phenomena accompanied by essential change in the objects, and natural history, in its widest sense, includes all the phenomena of the animal, vegetable, and mineral world. The use (now obsolete) of the term Physic for a branch of this last—viz. the science of medicine—is not peculiar to the English language. The Old French usage recognised physique in the sense of medicine; while almost all languages have used some form of the word physician for a practitioner of the art. See SCIENCE.