“Prediction Confirmed!”
“Another Verification!”
“A Third Verification of Prediction!”
Three times, in spite of its long-established sobriety, the _Journal of
the Franklin Institute_, vols. 106 and 107, reels with an astronomer’s
exhilarations. He might exult and indulge himself, and that would be no
affair of ours, and, in fact, we’d like to see everybody happy, perhaps,
but it is out of these three chanticleerities by Prof. Pliny Chase that
we materialize our opinion that, so far as methods and strategies are
concerned, no particular differences can be noted between astrologers
and astronomers, and that both represent engulfment in Dark Ages. Lord
Bacon pointed out that the astrologers had squirmed into prestige and
emolument by shooting at marks, disregarding their misses, and recording
their hits with unseemly advertisement. When, in August, 1878, Prof.
Swift and Prof. Watson said that, during an eclipse of the sun, they had
seen two luminous bodies that might be planets between Mercury and the
sun, Prof. Chase announced that, five years before, he had made a
prediction, and that it had been confirmed by the positions of these
bodies. Three times, in capital letters, he screamed, or announced,
according to one’s sensitiveness, or prejudices, that the “new planets”
were in the exact positions of his calculations. Prof. Chase wrote that,
before his time, there had been two great instances of astronomic
calculation confirmed: the discovery of Neptune and the discovery of
“the asteroidal belt,” a claim that is disingenuously worded. If by
mathematical principles, or by any other definite principles, there has
ever been one great, or little, instance of astronomic discovery by
means of calculations, confusion must destroy us, in the introductory
position that we take, or expose our irresponsibility, and vitiate all
that follows: that our data are oppressed by a tyranny of false
announcements; that there never has been an astronomic discovery other
than the observational or the accidental.
In _The Story of the Heavens_, Sir Robert Ball’s opinion of the
discovery of Neptune is that it is a triumph unparalleled in the annals
of science. He lavishes—the great astronomer Leverrier, buried for
months in profound meditations—the dramatic moment—Leverrier rises from
his calculations and points to the sky—“Lo!” there a new planet is
found.
My desire is not so much to agonize over the single fraudulencies or
delusions, as to typify the means by which the science of Astronomy has
established and maintained itself:
According to Leverrier, there was a planet external to Uranus; according
to Hansen, there were two; according to Airy, “doubtful if there were
one.”
One planet was found—so calculated Leverrier, in his profound
meditations. Suppose two had been found—confirmation of the brilliant
computations by Hansen. None—the opinion of the great astronomer, Sir
George Airy.
Leverrier calculated that the hypothetic planet was at a distance from
the sun, within the limits of 35 and 37.9 times this earth’s distance
from the sun. The new planet was found in a position said to be 30 times
this earth’s distance from the sun. The discrepancy was so great that,
in the United States, astronomers refused to accept that Neptune had
been discovered by means of calculation: see such publications as the
_American Journal of Science_, of the period. Upon August 29, 1849, Dr.
Babinet read, to the French Academy, a paper in which he showed that, by
the observations of three years, the revolution of Neptune would have to
be placed at 165 years. Between the limits of 207 and 233 years was the
period that Leverrier had calculated. Simultaneously, in England, Adams
had calculated. Upon Sept. 2, 1846, after he had, for at least a month,
been charting the stars in the region toward which Adams had pointed,
Prof. Challis wrote to Sir George Airy that this work would occupy his
time for three more months. This indicates the extent of the region
toward which Adams had pointed.
The discovery of the asteroids, or in Prof. Chase’s not very careful
language, the discovery of the “asteroidal belt as deduced from Bode’s
Law”:
We learn that Baron Von Zach had formed a society of twenty-four
astronomers to search, in accordance with Bode’s Law, for “a planet”—and
not “a group,” not “an asteroidal belt”—between Jupiter and Mars. The
astronomers had organized, dividing the zodiac into twenty-four zones,
assigning each zone to an astronomer. They searched. They found not one
asteroid. Seven or eight hundred are now known.
_Philosophical Magazine_, 12-62:
That Piazzi, the discoverer of the first asteroid, had not been
searching for a hypothetic body, as deduced from Bode’s Law, but, upon
an investigation of his own, had been charting stars in the
constellation Taurus, night of Jan. 1, 1801. He noticed a light that he
thought had moved, and, with his mind a blank, so far as asteroids and
brilliant deductions were concerned, announced that he had discovered a
comet.
As an instance of the crafty way in which some astronomers now tell the
story, see Sir Robert Ball’s _Story of the Heavens_, p. 230:
The organization of the astronomers of Lilienthal, but never a hint that
Piazzi was not one of them—“the search for a small planet was soon
rewarded by a success that has rendered the evening of the first day of
the nineteenth century memorable in astronomy.” Ball tells of Piazzi’s
charting of the stars, and makes it appear that Piazzi had charted stars
as a means of finding asteroids deductively, rewarded soon by success,
whereas Piazzi had never heard of such a search, and did not know an
asteroid when he saw one. “This laborious and accomplished astronomer
had organized an ingenious system of exploring the heavens, which was
eminently calculated to discriminate a planet among the starry host ...
at length he was rewarded by a success which amply compensated him for
all his toil.”
Prof. Chase—these two great instances not of mere discovery, but of
discovery by means of calculation according to him—now the subject of
his supposition that he, too, could calculate triumphantly—the
verification depended upon the accuracy of Prof. Swift and Prof. Watson
in recording the positions of the bodies that they had announced—
_Sidereal Messenger_, 6-84:
Prof. Colbert, Superintendent of Dearborn Observatory, leader of the
party of which Prof. Swift was a member, says that the observations by
Swift and Watson agreed, because Swift had made his observations agree
with Watson’s. The accusation is not that Swift had falsely announced a
discovery of two unknown bodies, but that his precise determining of
positions had occurred after Watson’s determinations had been published.
_Popular Astronomy_, 7-13:
Prof. Asaph Hall writes that, several days after the eclipse, Prof.
Watson told him that he had seen “a” luminous body near the sun, and
that his declaration that he had seen two unknown bodies was not made
until after Swift had been heard from.
Perched upon two delusions, Prof. Chase crowed his false raptures. The
unknown bodies, whether they ever had been in the orbit of his
calculations or not, were never seen again.
So it is our expression that hosts of astronomers calculate, and
calculation-mad, calculate and calculate and calculate, and that, when
one of them does point within 600,000,000 miles (by conventional
measurements) of something that is found, he is the Leverrier of the
text books; that the others are the Prof. Chases not of the text books.
As to most of us, the symbols of the infinitesimal calculus humble
independent thinking into the conviction that used to be enforced by
drops of blood from a statue. In the farrago and conflicts of daily
lives, it is relief to feel such a _rapport_ with finality, in a
religious sense, or in a mathematical sense. So then, if the seeming of
exactness in Astronomy be either infamously, or carelessly and
laughingly, brought about by the connivances of which Swift and Watson
were accused, and if the prestige of Astronomy be founded upon nothing
but huge capital letters and exclamation points, or upon the
disproportionality of balancing one Leverrier against hundreds of
Chases, it may not be better that we should know this, if then to those
of us who, in the religious sense, have nothing to depend upon, comes
deprivation of even this last, lingering seeming of foundation, or
seeming existence of exactness and realness, somewhere—
Except—that, if there be nearby lands in the sky and beings from foreign
worlds that visit this earth, that is a great subject, and the trash
that is clogging an epoch must be cleared away.
We have had a little sermon upon the insecurity of human triumphs, and,
having brought it to a climax, now seems to be the time to stop; but
there is still an involved “triumph” and I’d not like to have
inefficiency, as well as probably everything else, charged against us—
The Discovery of Uranus.
We mention this stimulus to the text book writers’ ecstasies, because
out of phenomena of the planet Uranus, the “Neptune-triumph” developed.
For Richard Proctor’s reasons for arguing that this discovery was not
accidental, see _Old and New Astronomy_, p. 646. _Philosophical
Transactions_, 71-492—a paper by Herschel—“An account of a comet
discovered on March 13, 1781.” A year went by, and not an astronomer in
the world knew a new planet when he saw one: then Lexell did find out
that the supposed comet was a planet.