Part 11 (1/2)

His statement was believed, however, and perhaps is still believed by many. Twenty years ago De Morgan wrote that 'the founder of the zetetic astronomy gained great praise from provincial newspapers for his ingenuity in proving that the earth is a flat, surrounded by ice,' with the north polar ice in the middle. 'Some of the journals rather incline to this view; but the ”Leicester Advertiser” thinks that the statement ”would seem to invalidate some of the most important conclusions of modern astronomy;” while the ”Norfolk Herald” is clear that ”there must be great error on one side or the other.” ... The fact is worth noting that from 1849-1857 arguments on the roundness or flatness of the earth did itinerate. I have no doubt they did much good, for very few persons have any distinct idea of the evidence for the rotundity of the earth.

The ”Blackburn Standard” and ”Preston Guardian” (December 12 and 16, 1849) unite in stating that the lecturer ran away from his second lecture at Burnley, having been rather too hard pressed, at the end of his first lecture, to explain why the large hull of a s.h.i.+p disappeared before the masts. The persons present and waiting for the second lecture a.s.suaged their disappointment by concluding that the lecturer had slipped off the ice edge of his flat disc, and that he would not be seen again till he peeped up on the opposite side.' ... 'The zetetic system,' proceeds De Morgan, 'still lives in lectures and books; as it ought to do, for there is no way of teaching a truth comparable to opposition. The last I heard of it was in lectures at Plymouth, in October 1864. Since this time a prospectus has been issued of a work ent.i.tled ”The Earth not a Globe;” but whether it has been published I do not know.'

The book was published soon after the above was written, and De Morgan gives the following quaint account of it: 'August 28, 1865. The zetetic astronomy has come into my hands. When in 1851 I went to see the Great Exhibition I heard an organ played by a performer who seemed very desirous of exhibiting one particular stop. ”What do you think of that stop?” I was asked. ”That depends on the name of it,” said I ”Oh! what can the name of it have to do with the sound? 'that which we call a rose,' etc.” ”The name has everything to do with it: if it be a flute stop I think it very harsh; but if it be a railway-whistle stop, I think it very sweet.” So as to this book: if it be childish, it is clever; if it be mannish, it is unusually foolish. The flat earth floating tremulously on the sea; the sun moving always over the flat, giving day when near enough, and night when too far off; the self-luminous moon, with a semi-transparent invisible moon created to give her an eclipse now and then; the new law of perspective, by which the vanis.h.i.+ng of the hull before the masts, usually thought to prove the earth globular, really proves it flat;--all these and other things are well fitted to form exercises for a person who is learning the elements of astronomy.

The manner in which the sun dips into the sea, especially in tropical climates, upsets the whole. Mungo Park, I think, gives an African hypothesis which explains phenomena better than this. The sun dips into the Western ocean, and the people there cut him in pieces, fry him in a pan, and then join him together again; take him round the under way, and set him up in the East. I hope this book will be read, and that many will be puzzled by it; for there are many whose notions of astronomy deserve no better fate. There is no subject on which there is so little accurate conception as on that of the motions of the heavenly bodies.[51] The author, though confident in the extreme, neither impeaches the honesty of those whose opinion he a.s.sails, nor allots them any future inconvenience: in these points he is worthy to live on a globe and to rotate in twenty-four hours.'

I chanced to reside near Plymouth when Mr. Rowbotham lectured there in October 1864. It will readily be understood that, in a town where there are so many naval men, his lectures were not altogether so successful as they have sometimes been in small inland towns. Numbers of naval officers, however, who were thoroughly well a.s.sured of the fact that the earth is a globe, were not able to demolish the crafty arguments of Parallax publicly, during the discussions which he challenged at the close of each lecture. He was too skilled in that sort of evasion which his a.s.sumed name (as interpreted by Liddell and Scott) suggests, to be readily cornered. When an argument was used which he could not easily meet, or seem to meet, he would say simply: 'Well, sir, you have now had your fair share of the discussion; let some one else have his turn.' It was stated in the newspapers that one of his audience was so wrathful with the lecturer on account of these evasions, that he endeavoured to strike Parallax with a k.n.o.bbed stick at the close of the second lecture; but probably there was no real foundation for the story.

Mr. Rowbotham did a very bold thing, however, at Plymouth. He undertook to prove, by observations made with a telescope upon the Eddystone Lighthouse from the Hoe and from the beach, that the surface of the water is flat. From the beach usually only the lantern can be seen. From the Hoe the whole of the lighthouse is visible under favourable conditions. Duly on the morning appointed, Mr. Rowbotham appeared. From the Hoe a telescope was directed towards the lighthouse, which was well seen, the morning being calm and still, and tolerably clear. On descending to the beach it was found that, instead of the whole lantern being visible as usual, only half could be seen--a circ.u.mstance doubtless due to the fact that the air's refractive power, which usually diminishes the dip due to the earth's curvature by about one-sixth part, was less efficient that morning than usual. The effect of the peculiarity was manifestly unfavourable to Mr. Rowbotham's theory. The curvature of the earth produced a greater difference than usual between the appearance of a distant object as seen from a certain high station and from a certain low station (though still the difference fell short of that which would be shown if there were no air). But Parallax claimed the peculiarity observable that morning as an argument in favour of his flat earth. It is manifest, he said, that there is something wrong about the accepted theory; for it tells us that so much less of the lighthouse should be seen from the beach than from the Hoe, whereas less still was seen. And many of the Plymouth folk went away from the Hoe that morning, and from the second lecture, in which Parallax triumphantly quoted the results of the observation, with the feeling which had been expressed seven years before in the 'Leicester Advertiser,' that 'some of the most important conclusions of modern astronomy had been seriously invalidated.' If our books of astronomy, in referring to the effects of the earth's curvature, had only been careful to point out how surveyors and sailors and those who build lighthouses take into account the modifying effects of atmospheric refraction, and how these effects have long been known to vary with the temperature and pressure of the air, this mischief would have been avoided. It would not be fair to say of the persons misled on that occasion by Parallax that they deserved no better; since the fault is not theirs as readers, but that of careless or ill-informed writers.

Another experiment conducted by Parallax the same morning was creditable to his ingenuity. Nothing better, perhaps, was ever devised to deceive people, apparently by ocular evidence, into the belief that the earth is flat--nor is there any clearer evidence of the largeness of the earth's globe compared with our ordinary measures. On the Hoe, some ninety or a hundred feet above the sea-level, he had a mirror suspended in a vertical position facing the sea, and invited the bystanders to look in that mirror at the sea-horizon. To all appearance the line of the horizon corresponded exactly with the level of the eye-pupils of the observer. Now, of course, when we look into a mirror whose surface is exactly vertical, the line of sight to the eye-pupils of our image in the mirror is exactly horizontal; whereas the line of sight from the eyes to the image of the sea-horizon is depressed exactly as much as the line from the eyes to the real sea-horizon. Here, then, seemed to be proof positive that there is no depression of the sea-horizon; for the horizontal line to the image of the eye-pupil seemed to coincide exactly with the line to the image of the sea-horizon. It is not necessary to suppose here that the mirror was wrongly adjusted, though the slightest error of adjustment would affect the result either favourably or unfavourably for Parallax's flat-earth theory. It is a matter of fact that, if the mirror were perfectly vertical, only very acute vision could detect the depression of the image of the sea-horizon below the image of the eye-pupil. The depression can easily be calculated for any given circ.u.mstances. Parallax encouraged observers to note very closely the position of the eye-pupil in the image, so that most of them approached the image within about ten inches, or the gla.s.s within about five. Now, in such a case, for a height of one hundred feet above the sea-level the image of the sea-horizon would be depressed below the image of the eye-pupil by less than three hundredths of an inch--an amount which could not be detected by one eye in a hundred. The average diameter of the pupil itself is one-fifth of an inch, or about seven times as great as the depression of the sea-horizon in the case supposed. It would require very close observation and a good eye to determine whether a horizontal line seen on either side of the head were on the level of the centres of the eye-pupils, or lower by about one-seventh of the breadth of either pupil.

The experiment is a pretty one, however, and well worth trying by any one who lives near to the sea-sh.o.r.e and sea-cliffs. But there is a much more effective experiment which can be much more easily tried--only it is open to the disadvantage that it at once demolishes the argument of our friend Parallax. It occurred to me while I was writing the above paragraph. Let a very small mirror (it need not be larger than a sixpence) be so suspended to a small support and so weighted that when left to itself it hangs with its face perfectly vertical--an arrangement which any competent optician will easily secure--and let a fine horizontal line or several horizontal lines be marked on the mirror; which, by the way, should be a metallic one, as its indications will then be altogether more trustworthy. This mirror can be put into the waistcoat pocket and conveniently carried to much greater height than the mirror used by Parallax. Now, at some considerable height--say five or six hundred feet above the sea-level, but a hundred or even fifty will suffice--look into this small mirror while _facing_ the sea. The true horizon will then be seen to be visibly below the centre of the eye-pupil--visibly in this case because the horizontal line traced on the mirror can be made to coincide with the sea-horizon exactly, and will then be found _not_ to coincide with the centre of the eye-pupil.

Such an instrument could be readily made to show the distance of the sea-horizon, which at once determines the height of the observer above the sea-level. For this purpose all that would be necessary would be a means of placing the eye at some definite distance from the small mirror, and a fine vertical scale on the mirror to show the exact depression of the sea-horizon. For balloonists such an instrument would sometimes be useful, as showing the elevation independently of the barometer, whenever any portion of the sea-horizon was in view.

The mention of balloon experiences leads me to another delusive argument of the earth-flatteners.[52] It has been the experience of all aeronauts that, as the balloon rises, the appearance of the earth is by no means what would be expected from the familiar teachings in our books of astronomy. There is a picture in most of these books representing the effect of ascent above the sea-level in depressing the line of sight to the horizon, and bringing more and more into view the convexity of the earth's globe. One would suppose, from the picture, that when an observer is at a great height the earth would appear to rise under him, like some great round and well-curved s.h.i.+eld whose convexity was towards him. Instead of this, the aeronaut finds the earth presenting the appearance of a great hollow basin, or of the concave side of a well-curved s.h.i.+eld. The horizon seems to rise as he rises, while the earth beneath him sinks lower and lower. A somewhat similar phenomenon may be noted when, after ascending the landward side of a high cliff, we come suddenly upon a view of the sea--invariably the sea-horizon is higher than we expected to find it. _Only_, in this case, the surface of the sea seems to rise from the beach below towards the distant horizon convexly not concavely; the reason of which I take to be this, that the waves, and especially long rollers or uniform large ripples, teach the eye to form true conceptions of the shape of the sea-surface even when the eye is deceived as to the position of the sea-horizon. Indeed, I should much like to know what would be the appearance of the sea from a balloon when no land was in sight (though I do not particularly wish to make the observation myself): the convexity discernible, for the reason just named, would contend strangely with the concavity imagined, for the reason now to be indicated.

The deception arises from the circ.u.mstance that the scene displayed below and around the balloon is judged by the eye from the experience of more familiar scenes. The horizon is depressed, but so little that the eye cannot detect the depression, especially where the boundary of the horizon is irregular. It is here that the text-book pictures mislead; for they show the depression as far too great to be overlooked, setting the observer sometimes about two thousand miles above the sea-level. The eye, then, judges the horizon to be where it usually is--on the same level as the observer; but looking downwards, the eye perceives, and at once appreciates if it does not even exaggerate, the great depth at which the earth lies below the balloon. The appearance, then, as judged by the eye, is that of a mighty basin whose edge rises up all round to the level of the balloon, while its bottom lies two or three miles or more below the balloon.

The zetetic faithful reason about this matter as though the impressions of the senses were trustworthy under all conditions, familiar or otherwise; whereas, in point of fact, we know that the senses often deceive, even under familiar conditions, and almost always deceive under conditions, which are not familiar. A person, for example, accustomed to the mist and haze of our British air, is told by the sense of sight, when he is travelling where a clearer atmosphere prevails, that a mountain forty miles from him is a hill a few miles away. On the other hand, an Italian travelling through the Highlands is impressed with the belief that all the features of the scenery are much larger (because he supposes them much more remote) than they really are. A hundred such instances of deception might easily be cited. The conditions under which the aeronaut observes the earth are certainly less familiar than those under which the Briton views the Alps and Apennines, or the Italian views Ben Lomond or Ben Lawers. It would be rash, therefore, even if no other evidence were available, to reject the faith that the earth is a globe because, as seen from a balloon, it looks like a basin. Indeed, to be strictly logical, the followers of Parallax ought on this account to adopt the faith that the earth is not flat, but basin-shaped, which hitherto they have not been ready to do.

We have seen that Parallax describes a certain experiment on the Bedford Level, which, if made as he states, would have shown certainly that something was wrong in the accepted system--for a six-mile straight-edge along water would be as severe a blow to the belief in a round earth, as a straight line on the sea-surface from Queenstown to New York. Another curious experiment adorns his little book, which, if it could be repeated successfully before a dozen trustworthy witnesses, would rather astonish men of science. Having, he says, by certain reasoning--altogether erroneous, but that is a detail--convinced himself that, on the accepted theory, a bullet fired vertically upwards ought to fall far to the west of the place whence it was fired, he carefully fixed an air-gun in a vertical position, and fired forty bullets vertically upwards. All these fell close to the gun--which is not surprising, though it must have made such an experiment rather dangerous; but two fell back into the barrel itself--which certainly was very surprising indeed. One might fairly challenge the most experienced gunner in the world to achieve one such vertical shot in a thousand trials; two in forty bordered on the miraculous.

The earth-flatteners I have been speaking of claim, as one of their objects, the defence of Scripture. But some of the earth-flatteners of the last generation (or a little farther back) took quite another view of the matter. For instance, Sir Richard Phillips, a more vehement earth-flattener than Parallax, was so little interested in defending the Scriptures, that in 1793 he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for selling a book regarded as atheistic. In 1836 he attempted the conversion of Professor De Morgan, opening the correspondence with the remark that he had 'an inveterate abhorrence of all the pretended wisdom of philosophy derived from the monks and doctors of the Middle Ages, and not less those of higher name who merely sought to make the monkish philosophy more plausible, or so to disguise it as to mystify the mob of small thinkers.' He seems himself to have succeeded in mystifying many of those whom he intended to convert. Admiral Smyth gives the following account of an interview he had with Phillips: 'This pseudo-mathematical knight once called upon me at Bedford, without any previous acquaintance, to discuss ”those errors of Newton, which he almost blushed to name,” and which were inserted in the ”Principia” to ”puzzle the vulgar.” He sneered with sovereign contempt at the ”Trinity of Gravitating Force, Projectile Force, and Void s.p.a.ce,” and proved that all change of place is accounted for by motion.' [Startling hypothesis!]

'He then exemplified the conditions by placing some pieces of paper on a table, and slapping his hand down close to them, thus making them fly off, which he termed applying the momentum. All motion, he said, is in the direction of the forces; and atoms seek the centre by ”terrestrial centripetation”--a property which causes universal pressure; but in what these attributes of pus.h.i.+ng and pulling differ from gravitation and attraction was not expounded. Many of his ”truths” were as mystified as the conundrums of Rabelais; so nothing was made of the motion.'

A favourite subject of paradoxical ideas has been the moon's motion of rotation. Strangely enough, De Morgan, who knew more about past paradoxists than any man of his time, seems not to have heard of the dispute between Keill and Bentley over this matter in 1690. He says, 'there was a dispute on the subject, in 1748, between James Ferguson and an anonymous opponent; and I think there have been others;' but the older and more interesting dispute he does not mention. Bentley, who was no mathematician, pointed out in a lecture certain reasons for believing that the moon does not turn on her axis, or has no axis on which she turns. Keill, then only nineteen years old, pointed out that the arguments used by Bentley proved that the moon does rotate instead of showing that she does not. (Twenty years later Keill was appointed Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. He was the first holder of that office to teach the Newtonian astronomy.)

In recent times, as most of my readers know, the paradox that the moon does not rotate has been revived more than once. In 1855 it was sustained by Mr. Jellinger Symons, one of whose staunchest supporters, Mr. H. Perigal, had commenced the attack a few years earlier. Of course, the gist of the argument against the moon's rotation lies in the fact that the moon always keeps the same face turned towards the earth, or very nearly so. If she did so exactly, and if her distance from the earth were constantly the same, then her motion would be exactly the same as though she were rigidly connected with the earth, and turned round an axis at the earth. The case may be thus ill.u.s.trated: Through the middle of a large orange thrust one short rod vertically, and another long rod horizontally; thrust the further end of the latter through a small apple, and now turn the whole affair round the short vertical rod as an axis. Then the apple will move with respect to the orange as the moon would move with respect to the earth on the suppositions just made. No one in this case would say that the apple was turning round on its axis, since its motion would be one of rotation round the upright axis through the orange. Therefore, say the opponents of the moon's rotation, no one should say that the moon turns round on her axis.

Of course, the answer would be obvious even if the moon's motions were as supposed. The moon is not connected with the earth as the apple is with the orange in the ill.u.s.trative case. If the apple, without rigid connection with the orange, were carried round the orange so as to move precisely as if it were so connected, it would unquestionably have to rotate on its axis, as any one will find who may try the experiment.

Thus for the straight rod thrust through the apple subst.i.tute a straight horizontal bar carrying a small basin of water in which the apple floats. Sway the bar steadily and slowly round, and it will be found (if a mark is placed on the apple) that the apple no longer keeps the same face towards the centre of motion; but that, to cause it to do so, a slow motion of rotation must be communicated to the apple in the same direction and at the same rate (neglecting the effects of the friction of the water against the sides of the basin) as the bar is rotating. In my 'Treatise on the Moon' I have described and pictured a simple apparatus by which this experiment may easily be made.

But, of course, such experiments are not essential to the argument by which the paradox is overthrown. This argument simply is, that the moon as she travels on her orbit round the sun--the real centre of her motion--turns every part of her equator in succession towards him once in a lunar month. At the time of new moon the sun illuminates the face of the moon turned from us; at the time of full moon he illuminates the face which has been gradually brought round to him as the moon has pa.s.sed through her first two quarters. As she pa.s.ses onwards to new moon again, the face we see is gradually turned from him until he s.h.i.+nes full upon the other face. And so on during successive lunations.

This could not happen unless the moon rotated. Again, if we lived on the moon we should find the heaven of the fixed stars turning round from east to west once in rather more than twenty-seven days; and unless we supposed, as we should probably do for a long time, that our small world was the centre of the universe, and that the stars turned round it, we should be compelled to admit that it was turning on its own axis from west to east once in the time just named. There would be no escape. The mere fact that all the time the stars thus seemed to be turning round the moon, the earth would not so seem to move, but would lie always in the same direction, would in no sort help to remove the difficulty.

Lunarian paradoxists would probably argue that she was in some way rigidly connected with the moon; but even they would never think of arguing that their world did not turn on its axis, _unless_ they maintained that it was the centre of the universe. This, I think, they would very probably do; but as yet terrestrial paradoxists have not, I believe, maintained this hypothesis. I once asked Mr. Perigal whether that was the true theory of the universe--the moon central, the earth, sun, and heavens carried round her. He admitted that his objections to accepted views were by no means limited to the moon's rotation; and, if I remember rightly, he said that the idea I had thrown out in jest was nearer the truth than I thought, or used words to that effect. But as yet the theory has not been definitely enunciated that the moon is the boss of the universe.

Comets, as already mentioned, have been the subjects of paradoxes innumerable; but as yet comets have been so little understood, even by astronomers, that paradoxes respecting them cannot be so readily dealt with as those relating to well-established facts. Among thoroughly paradoxical ideas respecting comets, however, may be mentioned one whose author is a mathematician of well-deserved repute--Professor Tait's 'Sea-Bird Theory' of Comets' Tails. According to this theory, the rapid formation of long tails and the rapid changes of their position may be explained on the same principle that we explain the rapid change of appearance of a flight of sea-birds, when, from having been in a position where the eye looks athwart it, the flight a.s.sumes a position where the eye looks at it edgewise. In the former position it is scarcely visible (when at a distance), in the latter it is seen as a well-defined streak; and as a very slight change of position of each bird may often suffice to render an extensive flight thus visible throughout its entire length, which but a few moments before had been invisible, so the entire length of a comet's tail may be brought into view, and apparently be formed in a few hours, through some comparatively slight displacement of the individual meteorites composing it.

This paradox--for paradox it unquestionably is--affords a curious ill.u.s.tration of the influence which mathematical power has on the minds of men. Every one knows that Professor Tait has potential mathematical energy competent to dispose, in a very short time, of all the difficulties involved in his theory; therefore few seem to inquire whether this potential energy has ever been called into action. It is singular, too, that other mathematicians of great eminence have been content to take the theory on trust. Thus Sir W. Thomson, at the meeting of the British a.s.sociation at Edinburgh, described the theory as disposing easily of the difficulties presented by Newton's comet in 1680. Glas.h.i.+er, in his translation of Guillemin's 'Les Cometes,' speaks of the theory as one not improbably correct, though only to be established by rigid investigation of the mathematical problems involved.

In reality, not five minutes' inquiry is needed to show any one acquainted with the history of long-tailed comets that Tait's theory is quite untenable. Take Newton's comet. It had a tail ninety millions of miles long, extending directly from the sun as the comet approached him, and seen, four days later, extending to the same distance, and still directly from the sun, as the comet receded from him in an entirely different direction. According to Tait's sea-bird theory, the earth was at both these epochs in the plane of a sheet of meteorites forming the tail; but on each occasion the sun also was in the same plane, for the edge of the sheet of meteorites was seen to be directly in a line with the sun. The comet's head, of course, was in the same plane; but three points, not in a straight line, determine a plane. Hence we have, as the definite result of the sea-bird theory, that the layer or stratum of meteorites, forming the tail of Newton's comet, lay in the same plane which contained the sun, the earth, and the comet. But the comet crossed the ecliptic (the plane in which the earth travels round the sun) between the epochs named, crossing it at a great angle. When crossing it, then, the great layer of meteorites was in the plane of the ecliptic; before crossing it the layer was greatly inclined to that plane one way, and after crossing it the layer was greatly inclined to that plane another way. So that we have in no way escaped the difficulty which the sea-bird theory was intended to remove. If it was a startling and, indeed, incredible thing that the particles along a comet's tail should have got round in four days from the first to the second position of the tail considered above, it is as startling and incredible that a mighty layer of meteorites should have s.h.i.+fted bodily in the way required by the sea-bird theory. Nay, there is an element in our result which is still more startling than any of the difficulties yet mentioned; and that is, the singular care which the great layer of meteorites would seem to have shown to keep its plane always pa.s.sing through the earth, with which it was in no way connected. Why should this preference have been shown by the meteor flock for our earth above all the other members of the solar system?--seeing that the sea-bird theory _requires_ that this comet, and not Newton's comet alone but all others having tails, should not only be thus complaisant with respect to our little earth, but should behave in a totally different way with respect to every other member of the sun's family.

We can understand that, while several have been found who have applauded the sea-bird paradox for what it _might_ do in explaining comets' tails, its advocates have as yet not done much to reconcile it with cometic observation.

The latest astronomical paradox published is perhaps still more startling. It relates to the planet Venus, and is intended to explain the appearance presented by this planet when crossing the sun's face, or, technically, when in transit. At this time she is surrounded by a ring of light, which appears somewhat brighter than the disc of the sun itself. Before fully entering on the sun's face, also, the part of Venus's globe as yet outside the sun's disc is seen to be girt round by a ring of exceedingly bright light--so bright, indeed, that it has left its record in photographs where the exposure was only for the small fraction of a second allowable in the case of so intensely brilliant a body as the sun. Astronomers have not found it difficult to explain either peculiarity. It has been proved clearly in other ways that Venus has an atmosphere like our own, but probably denser. As the sun is raised into view above the horizon (after he has really pa.s.sed below the horizon plane) by the bending power of our air upon his rays, so the bending power of Venus's air brings the sun into our view round the dark body of the planet. But the new paradox advances a much bolder theory.

Instead of an atmosphere such as ours, Venus has a gla.s.s envelope; and instead of a surface of earth and water, in some cases covered with clouds, Venus has a surface s.h.i.+ning with metallic l.u.s.tre.[53]

The author of this theory, Mr. Jos. Brett, startled astronomers by announcing, a few years ago, that with an ordinary telescope he could see the light of the sun's corona without the aid of an eclipse, though astronomers had observed that the delicate light of the corona fades out of view with the first returning rays of the sun after total eclipse.