by Charles Fort
Often in his book, an astronomer will sketchily take up a subject, and then drop it, saying that it is too complex, but that it can be mathematically demonstrated. The reader, who is a good deal of a dodger, himself, relieved at not having to go into complexities, takes this lazily and faithfully. It is bamboozlement. There are many of us, nowadays, who have impressions of what mathematicians can do to, or with, statistics. To say that something can be mathematically demonstrated has no more meaning than to say of something else that it can be politically demonstrated. During any campaign, read newspapers on both sides, and see that anything can be politically demonstrated. Just so it can be mathematically shown that twice two are four, and it can be mathematically shown that two can never become four. Let somebody have two of arithmetic’s favorite fruit, or two apples, and undertake to add two more to them. Although he will have no trouble in doing this, it can be mathematically shown to be impossible. Or that, according to Zeno’s paradoxes, nothing can be carried over intervening space and added to something else. Instead of ending up skeptically about mathematics, here am I upholding that it can prove anything.
We are told in the textbooks, or the tracts, as I regard these propagandist writings of Sunday School Science, that by parallax, or annual displacement of stars, relatively to other stars, the motion of this earth around the sun has been instrumentally determined. Mostly, these displacements are about the apparent size of a fifty cent piece, held up by someone in New York City, as seen by somebody in Saratoga. This is much refinement. We ask these ethereal ones—where is their excuse, if they get an eclipse wrong by a millionth of an inch, or a millionth of a second?
We look up this boast.
We find that the disagreements are so great that some astronomers have reported what is called negative parallax, or supposed displacement of stars, the wrong way, according to theory. See Newcomb, The Stars, p. 152. See the English Mechanic, 114-100, 112. We are out to show that astronomers themselves do not believe parallactic determinations, but believe those that they want to believe. Newcomb says that he does not believe these determinations that are against what he wants to believe.
Spectroscopic determinations are determined by whatever the spectroscopists want to determine. If one thinks not, let one look up the “determinations” by astronomers who were for and against Einstein. Grebe and Bachem, at Bonn, found shifts of spectral lines in Einstein’s favor. They were for Einstein. St. John, at the Mt. Wilson Observatory, found the testimony of the spectroscope not in Einstein’s favor. He was against Einstein. The spectroscope is said to be against us. But, if we had a spectroscope of our own, it would be for us.
In The Earth and the Stars, Abbot says that the spectroscope “seems to indicate” that variable stars, known as the Cepheid Variables, are double stars. But he says: “The distance between the supposed pairs turns out to be impossibly small.” When a spectroscopic determination is not what it should be, it only “seems to indicate.”
The camera is another of the images in astronomical idolatry. I note that bamboozlements that have played out everywhere else, still hold good in astronomy. Spirit photographs fall flat. At the movies, if we see somebody capering seemingly near an edge of a roof, we do not think that he had been photographed anywhere near an edge of a roof. Nevertheless, even in such a religious matter as photography in astronomy, a camera tells what it should tell, or the astronomers will not believe it.
If the astronomers would fight more among themselves, more would come out. How can I be a pacifist, just so long as I am trying to educate myself? Much comes out, war times. Considerable came out, in astronomical matters, during the Mars controversy. Everything that was determined by Lowell, with his spectroscope, and his camera, and his telescope, as an indication of the existence of life upon the planet Mars, was determined by Campbell, with his spectroscope, and his camera, and his telescope, to be not so. The question is not what an instrument determines. The question is—whose instrument? All the astronomers in the world may be against our notions, but most of their superiority is in their more expensive ways of deceiving themselves.
Foucault’s experiment, or the supposed demonstration with the pendulum, is supposed to show that this earth rotates daily. If a pendulum does—at least for a while—swing somewhat nearly in a constant line, though changing relatively to environment, and if we think that neither religiously, nor accidentally, has it received some helpful little pushes, we accept that here there may be indication of an annual, and not daily, rotation of this earth. That would account for the annual shift, and not the daily shift, of the stars. I don’t know that I accept this, but I have no opposing prejudice.
When I write of this earth as “almost stationary,” as I have to regard it, if I think of it as surrounded by a starry shell that is not vastly far away, I mean that relatively to the tremendous velocities of conventionality. But this alleged experiment has never been more than part of an experiment. I quote from one of the latest textbooks, Astronomy, by Prof. John C. Duncan, published in 1926. We are told that a pendulum, if undisturbed, swings for “several hours,” in “very nearly” the same plane. Farther along we read that, in the latitude of Paris, where Foucault made his experiment, the time for a complete demonstration is thirty-two hours. Prof. Duncan makes no comment, but it is the reader’s own fault if he reads in these statements that the swing of a pendulum, through more than part of an experiment, and in more than “very nearly” the same plane, ever has demonstrated the daily rotation of this earth.
In the textbooks, which are pretty good reading for contrary persons like ourselves, it is said that the circumstance that this earth is approximately an oblate spheroid indicates the rapid rotation of this earth. But our negative principle is that nothing exclusively indicates anything. It does not matter what an astronomer, or anybody else says to support any statement, the support must be a myth. Even if I could accept that the astronomers are right, I could not accept that they can demonstrate that they’re right. So we hunt around for opposing data, knowing that they must be findable somewhere. We come upon the shape of the sun. The sun rotates rapidly, but the sun is not an oblate spheroid: if there be any departure from sphericity, the sun is a prolate spheroid. Or we argue that oblateness may be an indication that in early, formative times this earth rotated rapidly, but that now this earth could be oblate and almost stationary. It may be another instance of my many credulities, but here I am accepting that this roundish, or perhaps pear-shaped, earth is flattened at the poles, as it is said to be.
Astronomers cite relative numerousness of meteors, as indication of this earth’s motion in an orbit. Prof. Duncan (Astronomy, p. 262) says that meteors seen after midnight are about twice as numerous as are those that are seen before midnight. “This is because, in the latter half of the night, we are riding on the front side of the Earth, as it moves along its orbit, and receives meteors from all directions, whereas in the earlier half we see none of those which the Earth meets ‘head on.’ ”
There is no use comparing little sparks of meteors, seen at different times of night, because of course soon after midnight more of these little things are likely to be seen than earlier in the evening, in lingering twilight. Here, Prof. Duncan’s statement is that when meteors can be seen morely, more meteors can be seen. That is wisdom that we shall not defile.
In the records of great meteors that were seen in England, in the year 1926—see Nature, Observatory, English Mechanic—eighteen were seen before midnight, and not one was seen after midnight. All other records that I know of are against this alleged indication that this earth moves in an orbit. For instance, see the catalogue of meteors and meteorites published in the Rept. Brit. Assoc. Ad. Sci., 1860. See page 18-51 after midnight (from midnight to noon); 146 before midnight (noon to midnight). I have records of my own, for 125 years, in which the preponderance of early meteors is so great that, if there were any sense to this alleged indication, it would mean that this earth is running backward, or going around
the way it shouldn’t. Of course I note that great meteors are more likely to be reported before midnight, because, though many persons are out after midnight, mostly they’re not out reporting meteors. But Prof. Duncan has made a statement, which depends upon records, and I am checking it up, according to records. Year 1925, for instance—meteors of France and England—fourteen before midnight: three after midnight. This record, as I have it, is not complete, but I will hold out for the proportionality. Most of the great meteors of 1930 were seen before midnight.
Whatever becomes of Prof. Duncan’s statement, I’ll make one, myself, and that is that, if nobody looks up, or checks up, what the astronomers tell us, they are free to tell us anything that they want to tell us. Their system is a slippery imposition of evasions that cannot be checked up, or that, for various reasons, mostly are not checked up. But at least once there was a big check up.
The 24th of January, 1925—excitement in New York City.
It was such as, in all foreign countries, is supposed to arise in America only when somebody finds out a new way of making dollars.
It was the morning of the eclipse of the sun, total over a part of New York City.
Open spaces in Central Park were crowded down to a line, as exactly as possible at 83rd Street. Up in the air were planes full of observers. Coogan’s Bluff was lively with scientific gab. Hospitals were arranging that patients should see the eclipse. There was scarcely a dollar in it, and this account will be believed, in England and France, no more than will most of our other accounts. At the Fifth Avenue Police Court, Magistrate Dale adjourned court, and went, with lawyers and cops and persons out on bail to the roof. In Brooklyn, the Chamber of Commerce dropped all matters of exports and imports and went to the roof. I don’t sup pose everybody was looking. I can’t accept homogeneity. There were probably some contrary ones who went down into cellars, simply because most of their neighbors were up on roofs. But the New York Telephone Company reported that when the eclipse came, not one call came into one of its offices, for ten minutes. When there are uproars in New York, they are such uproars as have never been heard anywhere else: but I think that most striking in the records of silences is this hush that came for ten minutes upon New York City.
Along the line of 83rd Street, which had been exactly predicted by the astronomers, as the southern limit of the path of totality, and in places north and south, were stationed 149 observers, sent by the New York lighting companies, to report upon light effects. With them were photographers.
At Petropaulovsk, Kamchatka, and at Cachapoyas, Peru, an eclipse is all that it should be, and books by astronomers tell of the minute exactness of the astronomers. But this was in New York City. Coogan’s Bluff got into this. There were cops and judges and gunmen on roofs, and the telephones were silent. There were 149 expert observers, who were not astronomers. They had photographers with them.
In time, the astronomers did pretty well. But, hereafter when they tell of their refinements, as with discs several hundred miles away, I shall think, not of fifty cent pieces, but of Ferris Wheels. Their prediction was wrong by four seconds.
The 149 observers for the lighting companies reported that the astronomers were wrong, in space, by three quarters of a mile.
It was the day of the big checkup.
If the sun and the planets compose a system that is enormously remote from everything else in existence, what is it that regularizes the motions, and why does not the mechanism run down? The astronomers say that the planets keep moving, and that a whole system does not run down, because space is empty, and there is “absolutely” nothing to tend to stop the moving bodies. See Abbot, The Earth and the Stars, p. 71. Astronomers say this early in their books. Later, they forget. Later, when something else requires explanation, they tell a different story. They explain the zodiacal light in terms of enormous quantities of matter in space. In their chapters upon meteors, they tell of millions of tons of meteoric dusts that fall from space to this earth, every year. Abbot says that space is “absolutely” empty. Ball, for instance, explains the shortening of the orbit of Encke’s comet as a result of friction with enormous quantities of matter in space. I don’t know how satisfactory, except to ourselves, our own expression will be, but compare it with a story of an absolute vacancy that is enormously occupied.
There is a tendency to regularize. Crystals, flowers, and butterflies’ wings. Proportionately as they become civilized, people regularize, or move in orbits. People regularize in eating and sleeping. There are clockwork Romeos and Juliets. Everywhere, where the tendency is not toward irregularization, the tendency is toward regularization. Here’s a good specimen of my own wisdom. Something is so, except when it isn’t so.
Not in terms of gravitation, but in terms of this tendency to regularize, celestial periodicities may be explained.
Why does not the mechanism of what the astronomers think is a solar system run down?
The astronomers say that this is because it is unresisted by a resisting medium.
Why does not a heart run down? Anyway for a long time?
It is only a part, and, as a part, is sustained by what may be considered a whole. If we think of the so-called solar system, not as a virtually isolated, independent thing, with stars trillions of miles away, but as part of what may be considered an organic whole, within a starry shell, our expression is that it is kept going organically, as the heart of a lesser organism is kept going.
Why does not the astronomers’ own system, or systematized doctrine, run down, or why so slow about it? It is only a part of wider organization, from which it is receiving maintenance in the form of bequests, donations, and funds of various kinds.
Our opposition is a system of antiquated thought, concerned primarily with the unthinkable. It is supported by instruments that are believed when they tell what they should tell. The germ of the system is the fall of the rising moon. Its simplest problem is a fairy theorem, fit for top-heavy infants, but too fanciful for grown-up realists. Its prestige is built upon its predictions. We have noted one of them that was three-quarters of a mile wrong.
Newtonism is no longer satisfactory. There is too much that it cannot explain.
Einsteinism has arisen.
If Einsteinism is not satisfactory, there is room for other notions.
For records of eclipses during which the stars were not displaced, as, according to Einstein, they should be, see indexes of Nature. See vols. 104 and 105. Displacement of spectral lines—see records of astronomers who have disagreed. Perihelion-motion of Mercury’s orbit—Einstein calculated without knowing what he was calculating about. Nobody knows what this eccentricity is. See records of the transits of Mercury. Neither Newtonians nor Einsteinites have predicted them right. See the London Times, April 17 and 24, 1923. Here Sir J. Larmor shows that, if Einstein’s predictions of light-effects during eclipses were verified, they disproved his theory—that, though Prof. Einstein would be a great mathematician, if in our existence anything could really be anything, relativity is so against him that he is only a relatively great mathematician, and made a bad error in his calculations, haying mistakenly doubled certain effects.
Defeat has been unconsciously the quest of all religions, all philosophies, and all sciences. If they were consciously trying to lose, they would be successes. Their search has been for the Absolute, in terms of which to explain the phenomenal, or for the Absolute to relate to. Supposed to have been found, it has been named Jehovah, or Gravitation, or the Persistence of Force. Prof. Einstein has taken the Velocity of Light, as the Absolute to relate to.
We cannot divorce the idea of reciprocity from the idea of relations, and relating something to the Absolute would be relating the Absolute to something. This is defeating an alleged concept of the Absolute, with the pseudo-idea of the Relative Absolute. The doctrine of Prof. Einstein’s is based not upon an absolute finding, but upon a question:
Which is the more graspable interpretation of the Michelson-Morley experiments
:
That no motion of this earth in an orbit is indicated, because the velocity of light is absolute;
Or that no motion of this earth in an orbit is indicated, because this earth is stationary?
Unfortunately for my own expressions, I have to ask a third question:
Who, except someone who was out to boost a theory ever has demonstrated that light has any velocity?
Prof. Einstein is a Girondist of the Scientific Revolution. His revolt is against classical mechanics, but his methods and his delusions are as antiquated as what he attacks. But it is my expression that he has functioned. Though his strokes were wobbles, he has shown with his palsies the insecurities of that in Science which has been worshipfully regarded as the Most High.
It is my expression that the dissolution of phenomenal things is as much a matter of internal disorders as the effect of any external force, and that the slump of so many astronomers in favor of Einstein, who has made good in nothing, indicates a state of dissatisfaction that may precede a revolution—or that, if a revolt starts in the Observatories, hosts of irreconcilable observations will be published by the astronomers themselves, cutting down distances of planets and stars enormously. I shall note an observation by an astronomer, such as probably no astronomer, in the past, would have published. It seems to have been recorded reluctantly, and a conventional explanation was attempted—but it was published.
I take from a clipping, from the Los Angeles Evening Herald, April 28, 1930, which was sent to me by Mr. L.E. Stein, of Los Angeles. In an account of the eclipse of the sun, April 28, 1930, Dr. H.M. Jeffers, staff astronomer of Lick Observatory, says: “We expected the shadow to be but half a mile in width. Instead of that, I think that it was nearer five miles broad.” He says: “It may be suggested by others that the broad shadow was cast by astronomical errors due to the moon being closer to the earth than we have placed it in theory. But I don’t believe that this broad belt was caused by anything but refraction.”