We try to have independent expressions. Accept that it is not distance
that has held the stars in unchanging position, if occasional, abrupt
change of position has been seen at the distance of the stars, and it is
implied that the not enormously distant stars are all about equally far
away from this earth, or some would be greatly particularized, and that
this earth does not move in an orbit, or stars would be seasonally
particularized, but would not be, if the stars, in one composition
revolve; also if this earth be relatively close to all stars, if many
changes of magnitude and of appearance and disappearance have been seen
at the distance of the stars, and, if, in the revolutions of the stars,
they do not swirl in displacements as bewildering as a blizzard of
luminous snowflakes, and if no state of inter-repulsion can be thought
of, especially as many stars merge into others, this composition is a
substantial, concave formation, or shell-like enclosure in which stars
are points. So many of the expressions in the preceding chapter imply
others, or all others. However, we have tried to have independent
expressions. Of course we realize that the supposed difference between
inductive and deductive reasoning is a false demarcation; nevertheless
we feel that deductions piled upon other deductions are only
architecture, and a great deal in this book expresses the notion that
architecture should be kept in its own place. Our general expression is
not that there should be no architecture and no mathematics in
astronomy, or neo-astronomy; not that there should be no poetry in
biology; no chemistry in physiology—but that “pure” architecture or
“pure” mathematics, biology, chemistry has its own field, even though
each is inextricably bound up with all the other aspects of being. So of
course the very thing that we object to in its extreme manifestations is
essential to us in some degree, and the deductive is findable somewhere
in every one of our inductions, and we are not insensible to what we
think is the gracefulness of some of the converging lines of our own
constructions. We are not revolting against aspects, but against
emphases and intrusions.
This first part of our work is what we consider neo-astronomic; and now
to show that we have no rabidity against the mathematical except when
over-emphasized, or mis-applied, our language is that all expressions so
far developed are to us of about 50% acceptability. A far greater
attempted independence is coming, a second part of this work,
considering phenomena so different that, if we term the first part of
our explorations “neo-astronomic,” even some other term, by which to
designate the field of the second part, will have to be thought of, and
the word “extra-geographic” seems best for it. If in these two fields,
our at least temporary conclusions be the same, we shall be impressed,
in spite of all our cynicisms as to “agreements.”
Neo-astronomy:
This supposed solar-system—an egg-like organism that is shelled away
from external light and life—this central and stationary earth its
nucleus—around it a revolving shell, in which the stars are pores, or
functioning channels, through some of which spray irradiating fountains
said to be “meteoric,” but perhaps electric—in which the nebulæ are
translucent patches, and in which the many dark parts are areas of
opaque, structural substance—and that the stars are not trillions nor
even millions of miles away—with proportional reductions of all internal
distances, so that the planets are not millions, nor even hundreds of
thousands of miles away.
We conceive of the variability of the stars and the nebulæ in terms of
the incidence of external light upon a revolving shell, and fluctuating
passage through light-admitting points and parts. We conceive of all
things being rhythmic, so, if stars be pores in a substance, that matrix
must be subject to some changes, which may be of different periodicities
in different regions. There may be local vortices in the most rigid
substance, and so stars, or pores, might revolve around one another, but
our tendency is to think that if light companions there be to some
stars, they are reflections of light, passing through channels, upon
surrounding substance, flickering from one position to another in the
small undulations of this environment. So there may be other
displacements, differences of magnitude, new openings and closings in a
substance that is not absolutely rigid. So “proper motion” might be
accounted for, but my own preference is to think, as to such stars as
_1830 Groombridge_ and Barnard’s “runaway star” that they are
planets—also that some of the comets, especially the tailless comets,
some of which have been seen to obscure stars, so that evidently they
are not wisps of highly attenuated matter, are planets, all of them not
conventionally recognized as planets, because of eccentricity and
remoteness from the ecliptic, two departures, however, that many of the
minor planets make to great degree. If some of these bodies be planets,
the irregularities of some of them are consistent with the
irregularities of Jupiter’s satellites.
I suggest that a combination of the Ptolemaic and the Tychonic doctrines
is in good accord with all the phenomena that we have considered, and
with all planetary motions that we have had no occasion to pay much
attention to—that the sun, carrying Mercury and Venus with him, revolves
at a distance of a few thousand miles, or a few tens of thousands of
miles, in a rising and falling spiral around this virtually, but not
absolutely, stationary earth, which, according to modern investigations
is more top-shaped than spherical; moon, a few thousand miles away,
revolving around this nucleus; and the exterior planets not only
revolving around this whole central arrangement, but approaching and
receding, in loops, also, quite as they seem to the remotest of them
preposterously near, according to conventional “determinations.”
So all the phenomena of the skies may be explained. But all were
explained in another way by Copernicus, in another way by Ptolemy, and
in still another way by Tycho Brahé. One supposes that there are other
ways. If there be a distant object, and, if one school of wisemen can by
their reasoning processes excellently demonstrate that it is a tree,
another school positively determine that it is a house, and other
investigators of the highest authoritativeness variously find and prove
that it is a cloud or a buffalo or a geranium, why then, their reasoning
processes may be admired but not trusted. Right at the heart of our
opposition, and right at the heart of our own expressions, is the
fatality that there is no reasoning, no logic, no explanation resembling
the illusions in the vainglories of common suppositions. There is only
the process of correlating to, or organizing or systematizing around,
something that is arbitrarily taken for a base, or a dominant doctrine,
or a major premise—the process of assimilating with something else,
making agreement with something else, or interpreting in terms of
something else, which supposed base is never itself final, but was
originally an assimilation with still something else.
I typify the result of all examinations of all principles or laws or
dominant thoughts, scientific, philosophic, or theologic, in what we
find in examining the pronouncement that motion follows the least
resistance:
That motion follows least resistance.
How are we to identify least resistance?
If motion follows it.
Then motion goes where motion goes.
If nothing can be positively distinguished from anything else there can
be no positive logic, which is attempted positive distinguishment.
Consider the popular “base” that Capital is tyranny, and almost utmost
wickedness, and that Labor is pure and idealistic. But one’s labor is
one’s capital, and capital that is not working is in no sense implicated
in this conflict.
Nevertheless we now give up our early suspicion that our whole existence
is a leper of the skies, quaking and cringing through space, having the
isolation that astronomers suppose, because other celestial forms of
being fly from infection—
That, if shelled away from external light and life, it is so surrounded
and so protected in the same cause and functioning as that of similarly
encompassed forms subsidiary to it—that our existence is
super-embryonic.
Darkness of night and of lives and of thoughts—super-uterine entombment.
Blackness of the unborn, quasi-illumined periodically by the little sun,
which is not light, but less dark.
Then we think of an organism that needs no base, and needs nothing of
finality, nor of special guidance to any part local to it, because all
parts partake of the pre-determined development of the whole.
Consequently our spleens subside, and our frequently unmannerly
derisions are hushed by recognitions—that all organizations of thought
must be baseless in themselves, and of course be not final, or they
could not change, and must bear within themselves those elements that
will, in time, destroy them—that seeming solidities that pass away, in
phantom-successions, are functionaries relatively to their periods, and
express the passage from phase to phase of all things embryonic.
So it is that one who searches for fundamentals comes to bifurcations;
never to a base; only to a quandary. In our own field, let there be any
acceptable finding. It indicates that the earth moves around the sun.
Just as truly it indicates that the sun moves around the earth. What is
it that determines which will be accepted, hypnotically blinding the
faithful to the other aspect? Our own expression is upon Development as
serial reactions to successive Dominants. Let the dominant spirit of an
era required that this earth be remote and isolated; Keplerism will
support it: let the dominant change to a spirit of expansion, which
would be impossible under such remoteness and isolation; Keplerism will
support, or will not especially oppose, the new dominant. This is the
essential process of embryonic growth, by which the same protoplasmic
substance responds differently in different phases.
But I do not think that all data are so plastic. There are some that
will not assimilate with a prevailing doctrine. They can have no effect
upon an arbitrary system of thought, or a system sub-consciously
induced, in its time of dominance: they will simply be disregarded.
We have reached our catalog of the sights and the sounds to which all
that we have so far considered is merely introductory. For them there
are either no conventional explanations or poor insufficiencies
half-heartedly offered. Our data are glimpses of an epoch that is
approaching with far-away explosions. It is vibrating on its edges with
the tread of distant space-armies. Already it has pictured in the sky
visions that signify new excitements, even now lapping over into the
affairs of a self-disgusted, played-out hermitage.
We assemble the data. Unhappily, we shall be unable to resist the
temptation to reason and theorize. May Super-embryology have mercy upon
our own syllogisms. We consider that we are entitled to at least 13
pages of gross and stupid errors. After that we shall have to explain.