A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century Fourth Edition

E-text prepared by Eric Hutton and the Project Gutenberg Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)



Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
      file which includes the original illustrations.
      See 28247-h.htm or 28247-h.zip:
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/2/4/28247/28247-h/28247-h.htm)
      or
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/2/4/28247/28247-h.zip)





A POPULAR HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

       *       *       *       *       *

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  PROBLEMS IN ASTROPHYSICS.
     Demy 8vo., cloth. Containing over 100
     Illustrations. Price 20s. net.

  THE SYSTEM OF THE STARS.
     Second Edition. Thoroughly revised and
     largely rewritten. Containing numerous
     and new Illustrations. Demy 8vo., cloth.
     Price 20s. net.

  MODERN COSMOGONIES. Crown
     8vo., cloth. Price 3s. 6d. net.


   A. AND C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: THE GREAT NEBULA IN ORION, 1883

_See p. 408_]


A POPULAR HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

by

AGNES M. CLERKE







[Illustration: JUPITER 1879

               SATURN 1885]



London
Adam and Charles Black
1908

First Edition, Post 8vo., published 1885
Second Edition, Post 8vo., published 1887
Third Edition, Demy 8vo., published 1893
Fourth Edition, Demy 8vo., published 1902
Fourth Edition, Post 8vo., reprinted February, 1908




PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

Since the third edition of the present work issued from the press, the
nineteenth century has run its course and finished its record. A new era
has dawned, not by chronological prescription alone, but to the vital
sense of humanity. Novel thoughts are rife; fresh impulses stir the
nations; the soughing of the wind of progress strikes every ear. "The
old order changeth" more and more swiftly as mental activity becomes
intensified. Already many of the scientific doctrines implicitly
accepted fifteen years ago begin to wear a superannuated aspect.
Dalton's atoms are in process of disintegration; Kirchhoff's theorem
visibly needs to be modified; Clerk Maxwell's medium no longer figures
as an indispensable factotum; "absolute zero" is known to be situated on
an asymptote to the curve of cold. Ideas, in short, have all at once
become plastic, and none more completely so than those relating to
astronomy. The physics of the heavenly bodies, indeed, finds its best
opportunities in unlooked-for disclosures; for it deals with
transcendental conditions, and what is strange to terrestrial experience
may serve admirably to expound what is normal in the skies. In celestial
science especially, facts that appear subversive are often the most
illuminative, and the prospect of its advance widens and brightens with
each divagation enforced or permitted from the strait paths of rigid
theory.

This readiness for innovation has undoubtedly its dangers and drawbacks.
To the historian, above all, it presents frequent occasions of
embarrassment. The writing of history is a strongly selective operation,
the outcome being valuable just in so far as the choice what to reject
and what to include has been judicious; and the task is no light one of
discriminating between barren speculations and ideas pregnant with
coming truth. To the possession of such prescience of the future as
would be needed to do this effectually I can lay no claim; but diligence
and sobriety of thought are ordinarily within reach, and these I shall
have exercised to good purpose if I have succeeded in rendering the
fourth edition of _A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth
Century_ not wholly unworthy of a place in the scientific literature of
the twentieth century.

My thanks are due to Sir David Gill for the use of his photograph of the
great comet of 1901, which I have added to my list of illustrations, and
to the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society for the loan of glass
positives needed for the reproduction of those included in the third
edition.

London, _July_, 1902.



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The progress of astronomy during the last hundred years has been rapid
and extraordinary. In its distinctive features, moreover, the nature of
that progress has been such as to lend itself with facility to
untechnical treatment. To this circumstance the present volume owes its
origin. It embodies an attempt to enable the ordinary reader to follow,
with intelligent interest, the course of modern astronomical inquiries,
and to realize (so far as it can at present be realized) the full effect
of the comprehensive change in the whole aspect, purposes, and methods
of celestial science introduced by the momentous discovery of spectrum
analysis.

Since Professor Grant's invaluable work on the _History of Physical
Astronomy_ was published, a third of a century has elapsed.