New Lands | Page 4

of them;
rabbles of hellhounds and the march of military angels. But they are
Promised Lands, and first must we traverse a desert. There is ahead of
us a waste of parallaxes and spectrograms and triangulations. It may be
weary going through a waste of astronomic determinations, but that
depends--
If out of a dreary, academic zenith shower betrayals 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