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of human triumphs,
and, having brought it to a climax, now seems to be the time to stop;
but there is still an involved "triumph" and I'd not like to have
inefficiency, as well as probably everything else, charged against us--
The Discovery of Uranus.
We mention this stimulus to the text-book writers' ecstasies, because
out of phenomena of the planet Uranus, the "Neptune-triumph"
developed. For Richard Proctor's reasons for arguing that this discovery
was not accidental, see Old and New Astronomy, p.646. Philosophical
Transactions, 71-492--a paper 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 pal¾o-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