New Lands by Charles Fort Read Free Book Online Page B

where it had been observed. All contemporaneous astronomers agreed that the comet had come down from the north, and not one of them thought of explaining that it had been invisible because it had been in the south. A luminosity, with a mist around it, altogether the apparent size of the moon, had burst into view. In Recreative Science, 3-143, Webb says that nothing like it had been seen since the year 1680. Nevertheless the orthodox pronouncement was that the object was small and would fade away as quickly as it had appeared. See the Athenaeum, July 6, 1861—“So small an object will soon get beyond our view.” (Hind)
    Popular Science Review, 1-513:
    That, in April, 1862, the thing was still visible.
    Something else that was seen under circumstances that cannot be considered triumphant—upon Nov. 28, 1872, Prof. Klinkerfues, of Göttingen, looking for Biela’s comet, saw meteors in the path of the expected comet. He telegraphed to Pogson, of Madras, to look near the star Theta Centauri, and he would see the comet. I’d not say that this was in the field of magic, but it does seem consummate. A dramatic telegram like this electrifies the faithful—an astronomer in the north telling an astronomer far in the south where to look, so definitely naming one special little star in skies invisible in the north. Pogson looked where he was told to look and announced that he saw what he was told to see. But at meetings of the R.A.S., Jan. 10 and March 14, 1873, Captain Tupman pointed out that, even if Biela’s comet had appeared, it would have been nowhere near this star.
    Among our later emotions will be indignation against all astronomers who say that they know whether stars are approaching or receding. When we arrive at that subject it will be the preciseness of the astronomers that will perhaps inflame us beyond endurance. We note here the far smaller difficulty of determining whether a relatively nearby comet is coming or going. Upon Nov. 6, 1892, Edwin Holmes discovered a comet. In the Jour, B.A.A., 3-182, Holmes writes that different astronomers had calculated its distance from twenty million miles to two hundred million miles, and had determined its diameter to be all the way from twenty-seven thousand miles to three hundred thousand miles. Prof. Young said that the comet was approaching; Prof. Parkhurst wrote merely that the impression was that the comet was approaching the earth; but Prof. Berberich (Eng. Mec., 56-316) announced that, upon November 6, Holmes’ comet had been 36,000,000 miles from this earth, and 6,000,000 miles away upon the 16th, and that the approach was so rapid that upon the 21st the comet would touch this earth.
    The comet, which had been receding, kept on receding.

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    Nevertheless I sometimes doubt that astronomers represent especial incompetence. They remind me too much of uplifters and grocers, philanthropists, expert accountants, makers of treaties, characters in international conferences, psychic researchers, biologists. The astronomers seem to me about as capitalists seem to socialists, and about as socialists seem to capitalists, or about as Presbyterians seem to Baptists; as Democrats seem to Republicans, or as artists of one school seem to artists of another school. If the basic fallacies, or the absence of base, in every specialization of thought can be seen by the units of its opposition, why then we see that all supposed foundations in our whole existence are myths, and that all discussion and supposed progress are the conflicts of phantoms and the overthrow of old delusions by new delusions. Nevertheless I am searching for some wider expression that will rationalize all of us—conceiving that what we call irrationality is our view of parts and functions out of relation to an underlying whole; an underlying something that is working out its development in terms of planets and acids and bugs, rivers and labor unions and cyclones, politicians and islands and astronomers. Perhaps we