A treatise on the sublime science of heliography, satisfactorily
demonstrating our great orb of light, the sun, to be absolutely no
other than a body of ice! Overturning all the received systems of the
universe hitherto extant; proving the celebrated and indefatigable Sir
Isaac Newton, in his theory of the solar system, to be as far distant
from the truth, as many of the heathen authors of Greece and Rome. By
Charles Palmer,[499] Gent. London, 1798, 8vo.
Mr. Palmer burned some tobacco with a burning glass, saw that a lens of ice
would do as well, and then says:
"If we admit that the sun could be removed, and a terrestrial body of ice
placed in its stead, it would produce the same effect. The sun is a
crystaline body receiving the radiance of God, and operates on this earth
in a similar manner as the light of the sun does when applied to a convex
mirror or glass."
Nov. 10, 1801. The Rev. Thomas Cormouls,[500] minister of Tettenhall,
addressed a letter to Sir Wm. Herschel, from which I extract the following:
"Here it may be asked, then, how came the doctrines of Newton to solve all
astronomic Phenomina, and all problems concerning the same, both _a parte
ante_ and _a parte post_.[501] It is answered that he certainly wrought the
principles he made use of into strickt analogy with the real Phenomina of
the heavens, and that the rules and results arizing from them {226} agree
with them and resolve accurately all questions concerning them. Though they
are not fact and true, or nature, but analogous to it, in the manner of the
artificial numbers of logarithms, sines, &c. A very important question
arises here, Did Newton mean to impose upon the world? By no means: he
received and used the doctrines reddy formed; he did a little extend and
contract his principles when wanted, and commit a few oversights of
consequences. But when he was very much advanced in life, he suspected the
fundamental nullity of them: but I have from a certain anecdote strong
ground to believe that he knew it before his decease and intended to have
retracted his error. But, however, somebody did deceive, if not wilfully,
negligently at least. That was a man to whom the world has great
obligations too. It was no less a philosopher than Galileo."
That Newton wanted to retract before his death, is a notion not uncommon
among paradoxers. Nevertheless, there is no retraction in the third edition
of the _Principia_, published when Newton was eighty-four years old! The
moral of the above is, that a gentleman who prefers instructing William
Herschel to learning how to spell, may find a proper niche in a proper
place, for warning to others. It seems that gravitation is not truth, but
only the logarithm of it.