New Lands | Page 6

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 planet when he saw one: then Lexell did find out that the supposed comet was a planet.
Statues from which used to drip the life-blood of a parasitic cult--
Structures of parabolas from which bleed equations--
As we go along we shall develop the acceptance that astronomers might as well try to squeeze blood from images as to try to seduce symbols into conclusions, because applicable mathematics has no more to do with planetary inter-actions than have statues of saints. If this denial of calculi have place in gravitational astronomy be accepted, the astronomers lose their supposed god; they become an unfocussed priesthood; the stamina of their arrogance wilts. We begin with the next to the simplest problem in celestial mechanics: that is the formulation of the inter-actions of the sun and the moon and this earth. In the highest mathematics, final, sacred mathematics, can this next to the simplest problem in so-called mathematical astronomy be solved?
It cannot be solved.
Every now and then, somebody announces that he has solved the Problem of the Three Bodies, but it is always an incomplete, or impressionistic demonstration, compounded of abstractions, and ignoring the conditions of bodies in space. Over and over we shall find vacancy under supposed achievements; elaborate structures that are pretensions without foundation. Here we learn that astronomers can not formulate the inter-actions of three bodies in space, but calculate anyway, and publish what they call the formula of a planet that is inter-acting with a thousand other bodies. They explain. It will be one of our most lasting impressions of astronomers: they explain and explain and explain. The astronomers explain that, though in finer terms, the mutual effects of three planets can not be determined, so dominant is the power of the sun that all other effects are negligible.
Before the discovery of Uranus, there was no way by which the miracles of the astro-magicians could be tested. They said that their formulas worked out, and external inquiry was panic-stricken at the mention of a formula. But Uranus was discovered, and the magicians were called upon to calculate his path. They did calculate, and, if Uranus had moved in a regular path, I do not mean to say that astronomers or college boys have no mathematics by which to determine anything so simple.
They computed the orbit of Uranus.
He went somewhere else.
They explained. They computed some more. They went on explaining and computing, year in and year out, and the planet Uranus kept on going somewhere else. Then they conceived of a powerful perturbing force beyond Uranus--so then that at the distance of Uranus the sun is not so dominant--in which case the effects of Saturn upon Uranus and Uranus upon Saturn are not so negligible--on through complexes of inter-actions that infinitely intensify by cumulativeness into a black outlook for the whole brilliant system. The pal?o-astronomers calculated, and for more than fifty years pointed variously at the sky. Finally two of them, of course agreeing upon the general background of Uranus, pointed within distances that are conventionally supposed to have been about six hundred millions of miles of Neptune, and now it is religiously, if not insolently, said that the discovery of Neptune was not accidental--
That the test of that which is not accidental is ability to do it again--
That it is within the power of anybody, who does not know a hyperbola from a cosine, to find out whether the astronomers are led by a cloud of rubbish by day and a pillar of bosh by night--
If, by the magic of his mathematics, any astronomer could have pointed to the position of Neptune, let him point to the planet past Neptune. According to the same reasoning by which a planet past Uranus was supposed to be, a Trans-Neptunian planet may be supposed to be. Neptune shows perturbations similar to those of Uranus.
According to Prof. Todd there is such a planet, and it revolves around the sun once in 375 years. There are two according to Prof. Forbes: one revolving once in 1,000 years, and the other once in 5,000 years. See Macpherson's A Century's Progress in Astronomy. It exists according to Dr. Eric Doolittle, and revolves once in 283 years, (Sci. Amer., 122-641). According to Mr. Hind it revolves once in 1,600 years, (Smithson. Miscell. Cols., 20-20).
So then we have found out some things, and, relatively to the oppressions that we felt from our opposition, they are reassuring. But also they are depressing. Because, if, in this existence of ours, there is no prestige higher than that of astronomic science, and, if that seeming of substantial renown has been achieved by a composition of bubbles, what of anything like soundness