New Lands | Page 4

of frailty, folly, and falsification, they will be manna to our malices--
Or sterile demonstrations be warmed by our cheerful cynicisms into delicious little lies--blossoms and fruits of unexpected oases--
Rocks to strike with our suspicions--and the gush of exposures foaming with new implications.
Tyrants, dragons, giants--and, if all be dispatched with the skill and the might and the triumph over awful odds of the hero who himself tells his story--
I hear three yells from some hitherto undiscovered, grotesque critter at the very entrance of the desert.

New Lands PART ONE CHAPTER TWO
"PREDICTION Confirmed!"
"Another Verification!"
"A Third Verification of Prediction!"
Three times, in spite of its long-established sobriety, the Journal of the Franklin Institute, vols. 106 and 107, reels with an astronomer's exhilarations. He might exult and indulge himself, and that would be no affair of ours, and, in fact, we'd like to see everybody happy, perhaps, but it is out of these three chanticleerities by Prof. Pliny Chase that we materialize our opinion that, so far as methods and strategies are concerned, no particular differences can be noted between astrologers and astronomers, and that both represent engulfment in Dark Ages. Lord Bacon pointed out that astrologers had squirmed into prestige and emolument by shooting at marks, disregarding their misses, and recording their hits with unseemly advertisement. When, in August 1878, Prof. Swift and Prof. Watson said that, during an eclipse of the sun, they had seen two luminous bodies that might be planets between Mercury and the Sun, Prof. Chase announced that, five years before, he had made a prediction, and that it had been confirmed by the positions of these bodies. Three times, in capital letters, he screamed, or announced, according to one's sensitiveness, or prejudices, that the "new planets" were in the exact positions of his calculations. Prof. Chase wrote that, before his time, there had been two great instances of astronomic calculation confirmed: the discovery of Neptune and the discovery of "the asteroidal belt," a claim that is disingenuously worded. If by mathematical principles, or by any other definite principles, there has ever been one great, or little, instance of astronomic discovery by means of calculations, confusion must destroy us, in the introductory position that we take, or expose our irresponsibility, and vitiate all that follows: that our data are oppressed by a tyranny of false announcements; that there never has been an astronomic discovery other than the observational or the accidental.
In The Story of the Heavens, Sir Robert Ball's opinion of the discovery of Neptune is that it is a triumph unparalled in the annals of science. He lavishes--the great astronomer Leverrier, buried for months in profound meditations--the dramatic moment--Leverrier rises from his calculations and points to the sky--"Lo!" there a new planet is found.
My desire is not so much to agonize over the single fraudulencies or delusions, as to typify the means by which the science of Astronomy has established and maintained itself:
According to Leverrier, there was a planet external to Uranus; according to Hansen, there were two; according to Airy, "doubtful if there were one."
One planet was found--so calculated Leverrier, in his profound meditations. Suppose two had been found--confirmation of the brilliant computations by Hansen. None--the opinion of the great astronomer, Sir George Airy.
Leverrier calculated that the hypothetical planet was at a distance from the sun, within the limits of 35 and 37.9 times this earth's distance from the sun. The new planet was found in a position said to be 30 times this earth's distance from the sun. The discrepancy was so great that, in the United States, astronomers refused to accept that Neptune had been discovered by means of calculation: see such publications as the American Journal of Science, of the period. Upon August 29, 1849, Dr. Babinet read, to the French Academy a paper in which he showed that, by observations of three years, the revolution of Neptune would have to be placed at 165 years. Between the limits of 207 and 233 years was the period that Leverrier had calculated. Simultaneously, in England, Adams had calculated. Upon Sept. 2, 1846, after he had, for at least a month, been charting the stars in the region toward which Adams had pointed, Prof. Challis wrote to Sir George Airy that this work would occupy his time for three more months. This indicates the extent of the region toward which Adams had pointed.
The discovery of the asteroids, or in Prof. Chases's not very careful language, the discovery of the "asteroidal belt as deduced from Bode's Law":
We learn that Baron Von Zach had formed a society of twenty-four astronomers to search, in accordance with Bode's Law, for "a planet"--and not "a group," not "an asteroidal belt"--between Jupiter and Mars. The astronomers had organized, dividing the zodiac into twenty-four zones, assigning each zone to an astronomer. They searched. They found