It is supposed that astronomic subjects and principles and methods can
not be understood by the layman. I think this, myself. We shall take up
some of the principles of astronomy, with the idea of expressing that of
course they can not be understood by the unhypnotized any more than can
the stories of Noah’s Ark and Jonah and the Whale be understood, but
that our understanding, if we have any, will have some material for its
exercises, just the same. The velocity of light is one of these
principles. A great deal in the astronomic system depends upon this
supposed velocity: determinations of distance, and amount of aberration
depend. It will be our expression that these are ratios of impositions
to mummeries, with such clownish products that formulas turn into
antics, and we shall have scruples against taking up the subject at all,
because we have much hard work to do, and we have qualms against
stopping so often to amuse ourselves. But, then, sometimes in a more
sentimental mood, I think that the pretty story of the velocity of
light, and its “determination,” will some day be of legitimate service;
be rhymed some day, and told to children, in future kindergartens,
replacing the story of little Bo-peep, with the tale of a planet that
lost its satellites and sometimes didn’t know where to find them, but
that good magicians came along and formulated the indeterminable.
It was found by Roemer, a seventeenth-century astronomer, that, at
times, the moons of Jupiter did not disappear behind him, and did not
emerge from behind him, when they “should.” He found that as distance
between this earth and Jupiter increased, the delays increased. He
concluded that these delays represented times consumed by the light of
the moons in traveling greater distances. He found, or supposed he
found, that when this earth is farthest from Jupiter, light from a
satellite is seen 22 minutes later than when nearest Jupiter. Given
measurement of the distance between opposite points in the earth’s
supposed orbit, and time consumed in traveling this distance—there you
have the velocity of light.
I still say that it is a pretty story and should be rhymed; but we shall
find that astronomers might as well try to formulate the gambols of the
sheep of little Bo-peep, as to try to formulate anything depending upon
the satellites of Jupiter.
In the _Annals of Philosophy_, 23-29, Col. Beaufoy writes that, upon
Dec. 7, 1823, he looked for the emergence of Jupiter’s third satellite,
at the time set down in the _National Almanac_: for two hours he looked,
and did not see the satellite emerge. In _Monthly Notices_, 44-8, an
astronomer writes that, upon the night of Oct. 15, 1883, one of the
satellites of Jupiter was forty-six minutes late. A paper was read at
the meeting of the British Astronomical Association, Feb. 8, 1907, upon
a satellite that was twenty minutes late. In _Telescopic Work_, p. 191,
W. F. Denning writes that, upon the night of Sept. 12, 1889, he and two
other astronomers could not see satellite IV at all. See the
_Observatory_, 9-237—satellite IV disappeared 15 minutes before
calculated time; about a minute later it re-appeared; disappeared again;
re-appeared nine minutes later. For Todd’s observations see the
_Observatory_, 2-227—six times, between June 9 and July 2, 1878, a
satellite was visible when, according to prediction, it should have been
invisible. For some more instances of extreme vagaries of these
satellites, see _Monthly Notices_, 43-427, and _Jour. B. A. A._, 14-27:
observations by Noble, Turner, White, Holmes, Freeman, Goodacre, Ellis,
and Molesworth. In periodical astronomical publications, there is no
more easily findable material for heresy than such observations. We
shall have other instances. They abound in the _English Mechanic_, for
instance. But, in spite of a host of such observations, Prof. Young
(_The Sun_, p. 35) says that the time occupied by light coming from
these satellites is doubtful by “only a fraction of a second.” It is of
course another instance of the astronomers who know very little of
astronomy.
It would have been undignified, if the astronomers had taken the sheep
of little Bo-peep for their determinations. They took the satellites of
Jupiter. They said that the velocity of light is about 190,000 miles a
second.
So did the physicists.
Our own notion is that there is no velocity of light: that one sees a
thing, or doesn’t; that if the satellites of Jupiter behave differently
according to proximity to this earth, that may be because this earth
affects them, so affecting them, because the planets may not, as we may
find, be at a thousandth part of the “demonstrated” distances. The
notion of velocity of light finds support, we are told in the text
books, in the velocity of sound. If it does, it doesn’t find support in
gravitational effects, because, according to the same text books,
gravitational effects have no velocity.
The physicists agreed with the astronomers. A beam of light is sent
through, and is reflected back through, a revolving shutter—but it’s
complex, and we’re simple: we shall find that there is no need to go
into the details of this mechanism. It is not that a machine is supposed
to register a velocity of 186,000 miles a second, or we’d have to be
technical: it is that the eye is supposed to perceive—
And there is not a physicist in the world who can perceive when a parlor
magician palms off playing-cards. Hearing, or feeling, or if one could
smell light, some kind of a claim might be made—but the well-known
limitations of seeing; common knowledge of little boys that a brand
waved about in the dark can not be followed by the eyes. The limit of
the perceptible is said to be ten changes a second.
I think of the astronomers as occupying a little vortex of their own in
the cosmic swoon in which wave all things, at least in this one supposed
solar system. Call it swoon, or call it hypnosis—but that it is never
absolute, and that all of us sometimes have awareness of our condition,
and moments of wondering what it’s all about and why we do and think the
things that sometimes we wake up and find ourselves doing and thinking.
Upon page 281, _Old and New Astronomy_, Richard Proctor awakens
momentarily, and says: “The agreement between these results seems close
enough, but those who know the actual difficulty of precise
time-observations of the phenomena of Jupiter’s satellites, to say
nothing of the present condition of the theory of their motions, can
place very little reliance on the velocity of light deduced from such
observations.” Upon pages 603-607, Proctor reviews some observations
other than those that I have listed—satellites that have disappeared,
come back, disappeared, returned again so bewilderingly that he wrote
what we have quoted—observations by Gorton, Wray, Gambart, Secchi, Main,
Grover, Smyth-Maclear-Pearson, Hodgson, Carlisle, Siminton. And that is
the last of his awareness: Proctor then swoons back into his hypnosis.
He then takes up the determination of the velocity of light by the
physicists, as if they could be relied upon, accepting every word,
writing his gospel, glorying in this miracle of science. I call it a
tainted agreement between the physicists and the astronomers. I prefer
mild language. If by a method by which nothing could be found out, the
astronomers determined that the velocity of light is about 190,000 miles
a second, and if the physicists by another method found about the same
result, what kind of harmony can that be other than the reekings of two
consistent stenches? Proctor wrote that very little reliance could be
placed upon anything depending upon Jupiter’s satellites. It never
occurred to him to wonder by what miracle the physicists agreed with
these unreliable calculations. It is the situation that repeats in the
annals of astronomy—a baseless thing that is supposed to have a
foundation slipped under it, wedged in, or God knows how introduced or
foisted. I prefer not to bother much with asking how the physicists
could determine anything of a higher number of changes than ten per
second. If it be accepted that the physicists are right, the question
is—by what miracle were the astronomers right, if they had “very little”
to rely upon?
Determinations of planetary distances and determinations of the velocity
of light have squirmed together: they represent either an agreeable
picture of co-operation, or a study in mutual support by writhing
infamies. With most emphasis I have taken the position that the vagaries
of the Jovian satellites are so great that extremely little reliance can
be placed upon them, but now it seems to me that the emphasis should be
upon the admission that, in addition to these factors of
indeterminateness, it was, up to Proctor’s day, not known with anything
like accuracy when the satellites should appear and disappear. In that
case one wonders as to the state of the theory in Roemer’s day. It was
in the mind of Roemer that the two “determinations” we are now
considering first most notably satisfied affinity: mutual support by
velocity of light and distances in this supposed solar system. Upon his
Third Law, which, as we shall see later, he constructed upon at least
three absences of anything to build upon, Kepler had, upon observations
upon Mars, deduced 13,000,000 miles as this earth’s distance from the
sun. By the same method, which is the now discredited method of
simultaneous observations, Roemer determined this distance to be
82,000,000 miles. I am not concerned with this great discrepancy so much
as with the astronomers’ reasons for starting off distances in millions
instead of hundreds or thousands of miles.
In Kepler’s day the strongest objection urged against the Copernican
system was that, if this earth moves around the sun, the stars should
show annual displacements—and it is only under modern “refinements” that
the stars do so minutely vary, perhaps. The answer to this objection was
that the stars are vastly farther away than was commonly supposed.
Entailed by this answer was the necessity of enlarging upon common
suppositions generally. Kepler determined or guessed, just as one
pleases, and then Roemer outdid him. Roemer was followed by Huygens,
with continued outdoing: 100,000,000 according to Huygens. Huygens took
for his basis his belief that this earth is intermediate in size to Mars
and Venus. Astronomers, to-day, say that this earth is not so
intermediate. We see that, in the secondary phase of development, the
early astronomers, with no means of knowing whether the sun is a
thousand or a million miles away, guessed or determined such distances
as 82,000,000 miles and 100,000,000 miles, to account for the
changelessness of the stars. If the mean of these extremes is about the
distance of present dogmas, we’d like to know by what miracle a true
distance so averages two products of wild methods. Our expression is
that these developments had their origin in conspiracy and prostitution,
if one has a fancy for such accusations; or, if everybody else has been
so agreeable, we think more amiably, ourselves, that it was all a matter
of comfortably adjusting and being obliging all around. Our expression
is that ever since the astronomers have seen and have calculated as they
should see and should calculate. For instance, when this earth’s
distance from the sun was supposed to be 95,000,000 miles, all
astronomers taking positions of Mars, calculated a distance of
95,000,000 miles; but then, when the distance was cut down to about
92,000,000 miles, all astronomers, taking positions of Mars, calculated
about a distance of 92,000,000 miles. It may sound like a cynicism of
mine, but in saying this I am quoting Richard Proctor, in one of his
lucid suspicions (_Old and New Astronomy_, p. 280).
With nothing but monotony, and with nothing that looks like relief for
us, the data of conspiracy, or of co-operation, continue. Upon worthless
observations upon the transits of Venus, 1761 and 1769, this earth’s
orbit was found by Encke to be about 190,000,000 miles across (distance
of the sun about 95,000,000 miles). Altogether progress had been more
toward the wild calculations of Huygens than toward the undomesticated
calculations of Roemer. So, to agree with this change, if not progress,
Delambre, taking worthless observations upon the satellites of Jupiter,
cut down Roemer’s worthless determinations, and announced that light
crosses the plane of this earth’s orbit in 16 minutes and 32 seconds—as
it ought to, Prof. Young would say. It was then that the agreeably
tainted physicists started spinning and squinting, calculating
“independently,” we are told, that Delambre was right. Everything
settled—everybody comfortable—see Chambers’ _Handbook of Astronomy_,
published at this time—that the sun’s distance had been ascertained,
“with great accuracy” to be 95,298,260 miles—
But then occurred something that is badly, but protectively, explained,
in most astronomical works. Foucault interfered with the deliciousness
of those 95,298,260 miles. One may read many books that mention this
subject, and one will always read that Foucault, the physicist, by an
“independent” method, or by an “absolutely independent” method,
disagreed somewhat. The “disagreement” is paraded so that one has an
impression of painstaking, independent scientists not utterly slavishly
supporting one another, but at the same time keeping well over the
90,000,000 mark, and so essentially agreeing, after all. But we find
that there was no independence in Foucault’s “experiments.” We come
across the same old disgusting connivance, or the same amiable
complaisance, perhaps. See Clerke’s _History of Astronomy_, p. 230. We
learn that astronomers, to explain oscillations of the sun, had decided
that the sun must be, not 95,298,260 miles away, but about 91,000,000.
To oblige them, perhaps, or innocently, never having heard of them,
perhaps, though for ten years they had been announcing that a new
determination was needed, Foucault “found” that the velocity of light is
less than had been necessary to suppose, when the sun was supposed to be
about 95,000,000 miles away, and he “found” the velocity to be exactly
what it should be, supposing the sun to be 91,000,000 miles away. Then
it was that the astronomers announced, not that they had cut down the
distance of the sun because of observations upon solar oscillations, but
because they had been very much impressed by the “independent”
observations upon the velocity of light, by Foucault, the physicist.
This squirm occurred at the meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society,
February, 1864. There would have to be more squirms. If, then, the
distance across this earth’s orbit was “found” to be less than Delambre
had supposed, somebody would have to find that light comes from the
satellites of Jupiter a little slower than Delambre had “proved.”
Whereupon, Glassenapp “found” that the time is 16 minutes and 40
seconds, which is what he should, or “ought to,” find. Whereupon, there
would have to be re-adjustment of Encke’s calculations of distance of
sun, upon worthless observations upon transits of Venus. And whereupon
again, Newcomb went over the very same observations by which Encke had
compelled agreement with the dogmas of his day, and Newcomb calculated,
as was required, that the distance agreed with Foucault’s reduction.
Whether, in the first place, Encke ever did calculate, as he said he
did, or not, his determination was mere agreement with Laplace’s in the
seventh book of the _Méchanique Céleste_. Of course he said that he had
calculated independently, because his method was by triangulation, and
Laplace’s was the gravitational.
That the word “worthless” does apply to observations upon transits of
Venus:
In _Old and New Astronomy_, Proctor says that the observations upon the
transits of 1761 and 1769 were “altogether unsatisfactory.” One supposes
that anything that is altogether unsatisfactory can’t be worth much. In
the next transit, of 1874, various nations co-operated. The observations
were so disappointing that the Russian, Italian, and Austrian
Governments refused to participate in the expeditions of 1882. In
_Reminiscences of an Astronomer_, p. 181, Newcomb says that the United
States Commission, of which he was Secretary, had, up to 1902 never
published in full its observations, and probably never would, because by
that time all other members were either dead or upon the retired list.
Method of Mars—more monotony—because of criticisms of the taking of
parallax by simultaneous observations, Dr. David Gill went to the Island
of Ascension, during the opposition of Mars of 1877, to determine alone,
by the diurnal method, the distance of this earth from the sun, from
positions of Mars. For particulars of Gill’s method, see, for instance,
Poor’s _Solar System_, p. 86. Here Prof. Poor says that, of course, the
orbital motion of Mars had to be allowed for, in Gill’s calculations. If
so, then of course this earth’s orbital motion had to be allowed for. If
Dr. Gill knew the space traversed by this earth in its orbit, and the
curvature of its path, he knew the size and shape of the orbit, and
consequently the distance from the sun. Then he took for the basis of
his allowance that this earth is about 93,000,000 miles from the sun,
and calculated that this earth is about 93,000,000 miles from the sun.
For this classic deduction from the known to the same known, he received
a gold medal.
In our earlier surveys, we were concerned with the false claim that
there can be application of celestial mechanics to celestial phenomena;
but, as to later subjects, the method is different. The method of all
these calculations is triangulation.
One simple question:
To what degree can triangulation be relied upon?
To great degree in measuring the height of a building, or in the little
distances of a surveyor’s problems. It is clear enough that astronomers
did not invent the telescope. They adopted the spectroscope from another
science. Their primary mathematical principle of triangulation they have
taken from the surveyors, to whom it is serviceable. The triangle is
another emblem of the sterility of the science of astronomy. Upon the
coat of arms of this great mule of the sciences, I would draw a prism
within a triangle.