A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century

This, then, is what is designed to be conveyed by the "foundation of astronomical or cosmical physics." It means the establishment of a science of Nature whose conclusions are not only presumed by analogy, but are ascertained by observation, to be valid wherever light can travel and gravity is obeyed--a science by which the nature of the stars can be studied upon the earth, and the nature of the earth can be made better known by study of the stars--a science, in a word, which is, or aims at being, one and universal, even as Nature--the visible reflection of the invisible highest Unity--is one and universal.

It is not too much to say that a new birth of knowledge has ensued. The astronomy so signally promoted by Bessel[403]--the astronomy placed by Comte[404] at the head of the hierarchy of the physical sciences--was the science of the _movements_ of the heavenly bodies. And there were those who began to regard it as a science which, from its very perfection, had ceased to be interesting--whose tale of discoveries was told, and whose farther advance must be in the line of minute technical improvements, not of novel and stirring disclosures. But the science of the _nature_ of the heavenly bodies is one only in the beginning of its career. It is full of the audacities, the inconsistencies, the imperfections, the possibilities of youth. It promises everything; it has already performed much; it will doubtless perform much more. The means at its disposal are vast and are being daily augmented. What has so far been secured by them it must now be our task to extricate from more doubtful surroundings and place in due order before our readers.

A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century — Part 143