by Charles Fort
In Cosmos, n.s., 42-467, is a list of astronomers who reported “unknown” dark bodies that they had seen crossing the disc of the sun:
According to the Nautical Almanac, the planet Mercury did cross the disc of the sun upon these dates.
It is either that the Flammarions do so punish those who see the new and the undesired, or that astronomers do “discover” Saturn, and do not know Mercury when they see him—and that Buckle overlooked something when he wrote that only the science of history attracts inferior minds often not fit even for clergymen.
Whatever we think of Flammarion, we admire his deftness. But we shall have an English instance of the ways in which Astronomy maintains itself and controls those who say that they see that which they “should” not see, which does seem beefy. One turns the not very attractive-looking pages of the English Mechanic, 1893, casually, perhaps, at any rate in no expectations of sensations—glaring at one, a sketch of such a botanico-pathologic monstrosity as a muskmelon with rows of bunions on it (English Mechanic, Oct. 20, 1893). The reader is told, by Andrew Barclay, F.R.A.S., Kilmarnock, Scotland, that this enormity is the planet Jupiter, according to the speculum of his Gregorian telescope.
In the next issue of the English Mechanic, Capt. Noble, F.R.A.S., writes, gently enough, that, if he had such a telescope, he would dispose of the optical parts for whatever they would bring, and would make a chimney cowl of the tube.
English Mechanic, 1893-2-309—the planet Mars, by Andrew Barclay—a dark sphere, surrounded by a thick ring of lighter material; attached to it, another sphere, of half its diameter—a sketch as gross and repellent to a conventionalist as the museum-freak, in whose body the head of his dangling twin is embedded, its dwarfed body lopping out from his side. There is a description by Mr. Barclay, according to whom the main body is red, and the protuberance blue.
Capt. Noble—“Preposterous . . . last straw that breaks the camel’s back!”
Mr. Barclay comes back with some new observations upon Jupiter’s lumps, and then in the rest of the volume is not heard from again. One reads on, interested in quieter matters, and gradually forgets the controversy—
English Mechanic, Aug. 23, 1897:
A gallery of monstrosities: Andrew Barclay, signing himself “F.R.A.S.,” exhibiting:
The planet Jupiter, six times encircled with lumps; afflicted Mars, with his partly embedded twin reduced in size, but still a distress to all properly trained observers; the planet Saturn, shaped like a mushroom with a ring around it.
Capt. Noble—“Mr. Barclay is not a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and, were the game worth the candle, might be restrained by injunction from so describing himself!” And upon page 362, of this volume of the English Mechanic, Capt. Noble calls the whole matter “a pseudo F.R.A.S.’s crazy hallucinations.”
Lists of the Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society, from June, 1875, to June, 1896:
“Barclay, Andrew, Kilmarnock, Scotland; elected Feb. 8, 1856.”
I cannot find the list for 1897 in the libraries. List for 1898—Andrew Barclay’s name omitted. Thou shalt not see lumps on Jupiter.
Every one of Barclay’s observations has something to support it. All conventional representations of Jupiter show encirclements by strings of rotundities that we are told are cloud-forms, but, in the Jour. B.A.A., December, 1910, is published a paper by Dr. Downing, entitled “Is Jupiter Humpy?” suggesting that various phenomena upon Jupiter agree with the idea that there are protuberances upon the planet. A common appearance, said to be an illusion, is Saturn as an oblong, if not mushroom-shaped: see any good index for observations upon the “square-shouldered aspect” of Saturn. In L’Astronomie, 1889-135, is a sketch of Mars, according to Fontana, in the year 1636—a sphere enclosed in a ring; in the center of the sphere a great protruding body, said, by Fontana, to have looked like a vast, black cone.
But, whether this or that should amuse or enrage us, should be accepted or rejected, is not to me the crux; but Andrew Barclay’s own opening words are:
That, through a conventional telescope, conventional appearances are seen, and that a telescope is tested by the conventionality of its disclosures; but that there may be new optical principles, or applications, that may be, to the eye and the present telescope, what once the conventional telescope was to the eye—in times when scientists refused to look at the preposterous, enraging, impossible moons of Jupiter.
In the English Mechanic, 33-327, is a letter from the astronomer, A. Stanley Williams. He had written previously upon double stars, their colors and magnitudes. Another astronomer, Herbert Sadler, had pointed out some errors. Mr. Williams acknowledges the errors, saying that some were his own, and that some were from Smyth’s Cycle of Celestial Objects. In the English Mechanic, Sadler says that, earnestly, he would advise Williams not to use the new edition of Smyth’s Cycle, because, with the exception of vol. 40, Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, “a more disgracefully inaccurate” catalogue of double stars had never been published. “If,” says one astronomer to the other astronomer, “you have a copy of this miserable production, sell it for waste paper. It is crammed with the most stupid errors.”
A new character appears. He is George F. Chambers, F.R.A.S., author of a long list of astronomical works, and a tract, entitled, Where Are You Going, Sunday? He, too, is earnest. In this early correspondence, nothing ulterior is apparent, and we suppose that it is in the cause of Truth that he is so earnest. Says one astronomer that the other astronomer is “evidently one of those self-sufficient young men, who are nothing, if not abusive.” But can Mr. Sadler have so soon forgotten what was done to him, on a former occasion, after he had slandered Admiral Smyth? Chambers challenges Sadler to publish a list of, say, fifty “stupid errors” in the book. He quotes the opinion of the Astronomer Royal: that the book was a work of “sterling merit.” “Airy vs. Sadler,” he says: “which is it to be?”
We began not very promisingly. Few excitements seemed to lurk in such a subject as double stars, their colors and magnitudes; but slander and abuse are livelier, and now enters curiosity: we’d like to know what was done to Herbert Sadler.
Late in the year 1876, Herbert Sadler was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. In Monthly Notices, R.A.S., January, 1879, appears his first paper that was read to the Society: Notes on the late Admiral Smyth’s Cycle of Celestial Objects, volume second, known as the Bedford Catalogue. With no especial vehemence, at least according to our own standards of repression, Sadler expresses himself upon some “extraordinary mistakes” in this work.
At the meeting of the Society, May 9, 1879, there was an attack upon Sadler, and it was led by Chambers, or conducted by Chambers, who cried out that Sadler had slandered a great astronomer, and demanded that Sadler should resign. In the report of this meeting, published in the Observatory, there is not a trace of anybody’s endeavors to find out whether there were errors in this book or not: Chambers ignored everything but his accusation of slander, and demanded again that Sadler should resign. In Monthly Notices, 39-389, the Council of the Society published regrets that it had permitted publication of Sadler’s paper, “which was entirely unsupported by the citation of instances upon which his judgment was founded.”
We find that it was Mr. Chambers who had revised and published the new edition of Smyth’s Cycle.
In the English Mechanic, Chambers challenged Sadler to publish, say, fifty “stupid errors.” See page 451, vol. 33, English Mechanic—Sadler lists just fifty “stupid errors.” He says that he could have listed, not fifty, but 250, not trivial, but of the “grossest kind.” He says that in one set of 167 observations, 117 were wrong.
The English Mechanic drops out of this comedy with the obvious title, but developments go on. Evidently withdrawing its “regrets,” the Council permitted publication of a criticism of Chambers’ edition of Smyth’s Cycle, in Monthly Notices, 40-497, and the language in this criticism, by S.W. Burnham, was no less interpretable as s
landerous than was Sadler’s: that Smyth’s data were “either roughly approximate or grossly incorrect, and so constantly recurring that it was impossible to explain that they were ordinary errors of observation.” Burnham lists thirty pages of errors.
Following is a paper by E.B. Knobel, who published seventeen pages of instances in which, in his opinion, Mr. Burnham had been too severe. Knowing of no objection by Burnham to this reduction, we have left thirteen pages of errors in one standard astronomical work, which may fairly be considered as representative of astronomical work in general, inasmuch as it was, in the opinion of the Astronomer Royal, a book of “sterling merit.”
I think that now we have accomplished something. After this we should all get along more familiarly and agreeably together.
Thirteen pages of errors in one standard astronomical work are reassuring; there is a likable fallibility here that should make for better relations. If the astronomers were what they think they are, we might as well make squeaks of disapproval against Alpine summits. As to astronomers who calculate positions of planets—of whom he was one—Newcomb, in Reminiscences of an Astronomer, says—“The men who have done it are therefore, in intellect, the select few of the human race—an aristocracy above all others in the scale of being.” We could never get along comfortably with such awful selectness as that. We are grateful to Mr. Sadler, in the cause of more comfortable relations.
6
English Mechanic, 56-184:
That, upon April 25, 1892, Archdeacon Nouri climbed Mt. Ararat. It was his hope that he should find something of archaeologic compensation for his clamberings. He found Noah’s Ark.
About the same time, Dr. Holden, Director of the Lick Observatory, was watching one of the polished and mysterious-looking instruments that, in the new ikonology, have replaced the images of saints. Dr. Holden was waiting for the appointed moment of the explosion of a large quantity of dynamite in San Francisco Bay. The moment came. The polished little “saint” revealed to the faithful scientist. He wrote an account of the record, and sent copies to the San Francisco newspapers. Then he learned that the dynamite had not been fired off. He sent a second messenger after the first messenger, and, because messengers sometimes have velocities proportional to urgencies—“the Observatory escaped ridicule by a narrow margin.” See the Observatory, 20-467. This revelation came from Prof. Colton, who, though probably faithful to all the “saints,” did not like Dr. Holden.
The system that Archdeacon Nouri represented lost its power because its claims exceeded all conceivableness, and because, in other respects, of its inertness to the obvious. The system that Dr. Holden represented is not different: there is the same seeing of whatever may be desirable, and the same profound meditations upon the remote, with the same inattention to fairly acceptable starting points. The astronomers like to tell audiences of just what gases are burning in an unimaginably remote star, but have never reasonably made acceptable, for instance, that this earth is round, to start with. Of course I do not mean to say that this, or anything else, can be positively proved, but it is depressing to hear it said, so authoritatively, that the round shadow of this earth upon the moon proves that this earth is round, whereas records of angular shadows are common, and whereas, if this earth were a cube, its straight sides would cast a rounded shadow upon the convex moon. That the first part of a receding vessel to disappear should be the lower part may be only such an illusion of perspective as that by which railroad tracks seem to dip toward each other in the distance. Meteors sometimes appear over one part of the horizon and then seem to curve down behind the opposite part of the horizon, whereas they describe no such curve, because to a string of observers each observer is at the center of the seeming curve.
Once upon a time—about the year 1870—occurred an unusual sporting event. John Hampden, who was noted for his piety and his bad language, whose avowed purpose was to support the principles of this earth’s earliest geodesist, offered to bet five hundred pounds that he could prove the flatness of this earth. Somewhere in England is the Bedford Canal, and along a part of it is a straight, unimpeded view, six miles in length. Orthodox doctrine—or the doctrine of the newer orthodoxy, because John Hampden considered that he was orthodox—is that the earth’s curvature is expressible in the formula of eight inches for the first mile, and then the square of the distance times eight inches. For two miles, then, the square of two, or four, times eight. An object six miles away should be depressed 288 inches, or, allowing for refraction, according to Proctor (Old and New Astronomy) 216 inches. Hampden said that an object six miles away, upon this part of the Bedford Canal, was not depressed as it “should” be. Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace took up the bet. Mr. Walsh, Editor of the Field, was the stakeholder. A procession went to the Bedford Canal. Objects were looked at through telescopes, or looked for, and the decision was that Hampden had lost. There was rejoicing in the fold of the chosen, though Hampden, in one of his most furious bombardments of verses from the Bible, charged conspiracy and malfeasance and confiscation, and what else I don’t know, piously and intemperately declaring that he had been defrauded.
In the English Mechanic, 80-40, someone writes to find out about the “Bedford Canal Experiment.” We learn that the experiment had been made again. The correspondent writes that, if there were basis to the rumors that he had heard, there must be something wrong with established doctrine. Upon page 138, Lady Blount answers—that, upon May 11, 1904, she had gone to the Bedford Canal, accompanied by Mr. E. Clifton, a well-known photographer, who was himself uninfluenced by her motives, which were the familiar ones of attempting to restore the old gentleman who first took up the study of geodesy. However, she seethes with neither piety nor profanity. She says that, with his telescopic camera, Mr. Clifton had photographed a sheet, six miles away, though by conventional theory the sheet should have been invisible. In a later number of the English Mechanic, a reproduction of this photograph is published. According to this evidence this earth is flat, or is a sphere enormously greater than is generally supposed. But at the 1901 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Mr. H. Yule Oldham read a paper upon his investigations at the Bedford Canal. He, too, showed photographs. In his photographs, everything that should have been invisible was invisible.
I accept that anybody who is convinced that still are there relics upon Mt. Ararat, has only to climb Mt. Ararat, and he must find something that can be said to be part of Noah’s Ark, petrified perhaps. If someone else should be convinced that a mistake has been made, and that the mountain is really Pike’s Peak, he has only to climb Pike’s Peak and prove that the most virtuous of all lands was once the Holy Land. The meaning that I read in the whole subject is that, in this Dark Age that we’re living in, not even such rudimentary matters as the shape of this earth have ever been investigated except now and then to support somebody’s theory, because astronomers have instinctively preferred the remote and the not so easily understandable and the safe from external inquiry. In Earth Features and Their Meaning, Prof. Hobbs says that this earth is top-shaped, quite as the sloping extremities of Africa and South America suggest. According to Prof. Hobbs, observations upon the pendulum suggest that this earth is shaped like a top. Some years ago, Dr. Gregory read a paper at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, giving data to support the theory of a top-shaped earth. In the records of the Society, one may read a report of the discussion that followed. There was no ridiculing. The President of the Society closed the discussion with virtual endorsement, recalling that it was Christopher Columbus who first said that this earth is top-shaped. For other expressions of this revolt against ancient dogmas, see Bull. Soc. Astro. de France, 17-315; 18-143; Pop. Sci. News, 31-234; Eng. Mec., 77-159; Sci. Amer., 100-441.
As to supposed motions of this earth, axial and orbital, circumstances are the same, despite the popular supposition that the existence of these motions has been established by syntheses of data and by unanswerable logic. All scientists, philosop
hers, religionists, are today looking back, wondering what could have been the matter with their predecessors to permit them to believe what they did believe. Granted that there will be posterity, we shall be predecessors. Then what is it that is conventionally taught today that will in the future seem as imbecilic as to all present orthodoxies seem the vaporings of preceding systems?
Well, for instance, that it is this earth that moves, though the sun seems to, by the same illusion by which to passengers on a boat, the shore seems to move, though it is the boat that is moving.
Apply this reasoning to the moon. The moon seems to move around the earth—but to passengers on a boat, the shore seems to move, whereas it is the boat that is moving—therefore the moon does not move.
As to the motions of the planets and stars that coordinate with the idea of a moving earth—they coordinate equally well with the idea of a stationary earth.
In the system that was conceived by Copernicus I find nothing that can be said to resemble foundation: nothing but the appeal of greater simplicity. An earth that rotates and revolves is simpler to conceive of than is a stationary earth with a rigid composition of stars, swinging around it, stars kept apart by some unknown substance, or inter-repulsion. But all those who think that simplification is a standard to judge by are referred to Herbert Spencer’s compilations of data indicating that advancing knowledge complicates, making, then, complexity, and not simplicity, the standard by which to judge the more advanced. My own acceptance is that there are fluxes one way and then the other way: that the Ptolemaic system was complex and was simplified; that, out of what was once a clarification, new complications have arisen, and that again will come flux toward simplification or clarification—that the simplification by Copernicus has now developed into an incubus of unintelligibilities revolving around a farrago of inconsistencies, to which the complexities of Ptolemy are clear geometry: miracles, incredibilities, puerilities; tottering deductions depending upon flimsy agreements; brutalized observations that are slaves to infatuated principles—