The course examines central themes in the development of human understanding of nature and methods of its study, and presents a few central basic concepts in physics and astronomy. At the centre of the second part of the course stands the physics of the 18^th to the 20^th centuries. It discusses different attempts to propose a universal theory of nature, and the various methodological views suggested to comprehend inorganic nature following different scientific findings and philosophical positions by scientists like Laplace, Maxwell, Einstein and Bohr. We will examine the role of inner and external scientific factors in the processes of emergence and change of scientific concepts and views. The course surveys developments of a few central occupations of the discipline in the period including the experience and theory of electricity (18^th century) and electromagnetism (19^th century), the emergence of energy conservation and thermodynamics and the relativistic and quantum revolution at the early 20^th century. Among others, the course looks at the changing relationships between experiment and theory, science and technology and physics and philosophy and other scientific disciplines.