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Rollo's Philosophy [Fire]

Chapter 2: PREFACE.
By Jacob Abbott
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Children & Young Adult ReadingScience - Chemistry/Biochemistry

About This Book

A series of conversations and simple experiments guides a curious child and his companions through the properties and uses of fire. Starting with slow combustion and hearth management, the text moves to lamp-lighting, burning metals, grass and pasture fires, and the effects of gunpowder, then explains heat transfer by radiation and conduction and how conditions influence ignition and flame behavior. Practical demonstrations, episodes about alarms and larger conflagrations, and directed questions for young readers emphasize observation, reasoning, and the relation between theoretical explanation and everyday practice.

PREFACE.

The main design in view, in the discussions which are offered to the juvenile world, under the title of The Rollo Philosophy, relates rather to their effect upon the little reader’s habits of thinking, reasoning, and observation, than to the additions they may make to his stock of knowledge. The benefit which the author intends that the reader shall derive from them, is an influence on the cast of his intellectual character, which is receiving its permanent form during the years to which these writings are adapted.

The acquisition of knowledge, however, though in this case a secondary, is by no means an unimportant object; and the discussion of the several topics proceeds accordingly, with regularity, upon a certain system of classification. This classification is based upon the more obvious external properties and relations of matter, and less upon those, which, though they are more extensive and general in their nature, and, therefore, more suitable, in a strictly scientific point of view, for the foundations of a system, are less apparent, and require higher powers of generalization and abstraction, and are, therefore, less in accordance with the genius and spirit of the Rollo philosophy.

As teachers have, in some cases, done the author the honor to introduce some of the preceding works of this class into their schools, as reading books, &c., considerable reference has been had to this, in the form and manner of the discussion, and questions have been added to facilitate the use of the books in cases where parents or teachers may make the reading of them a regular exercise of instruction.