ABSTRACT
We think it will be useful for you to spend the few minutes necessary to read this part of the book because it provides a guide to its structure and also to how we think it should be used. It may also reveal a little about the authors, and help to establish a rapport with us. We have written this book primarily for students who are studying higher education courses in physical geography, or in another environmental area, but who have little recent experience or formal training in the sciences. We find that a lot of our students come into either, or both, of these categories’, and we know from our colleagues elsewhere that this is a common experience. We firmly believe that your understanding of the physical environment, and environmental issues, will benefit enormously from an appreciation of some basic scientific concepts and an ability to use correctly the relevant vocabulary. You may be one of those many people who believe that even rudimentary scientific principles are in some way obscure and quite beyond your intellectual capabilities. If you are carrying such notions, we want you to discard them right here.
