The Adolfo Stahl lectures in astronomy, delivered in San Francisco, California, in 1916-17 and 1917-18, under the auspices of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (1919) (14762007396)

Identifier: adolfostahllectu00astruoft (find matches)
Title: The Adolfo Stahl lectures in astronomy, delivered in San Francisco, California, in 1916-17 and 1917-18, under the auspices of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Year: 1919 (1910s)
Authors: Astronomical Society of the Pacific Aitken, Robert Grant, 1864-1951
Subjects: Astronomy
Publisher: San Francisco Stanford University Press
Contributing Library: Gerstein - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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of the sun-spots, or that of the companion to Siriiis,may be assigned as a direct result of the use of new orimproved apparatus; the first stellar parallax was primarilydue to Bessels manipulative skill; fifteen years of patientsearch was involved in the discovery of the asteroid Astraea;Keelers work on Saturns rings may well be regarded as pureinspiration combined with great technical skill; the discoveryof Uranus was largely chance. . . . the only safe con-clusion seems to be that there are no general rules of conductfor discovery. (Turner) It would be quite possible, then, to limit our treatment ofthe subject exclusively to instruments, the purely mechanicaladjuncts of discovery, and to describe the improvements in ourtelescopes, meridian circles, zenith telescopes, micrometers,cameras, spectrographs, and photometers. Such a view-point,though partial and inadequate, would be a legitimate one, forcertainly, in the final analysis, all astronomical discovery 1 Delivered April 6, 1917.
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PLATE XXV. The 36-Inch Refractor, Lick Observatory. Astronomical Discovery 111 depends upon such tools. Without the telescope, astronomycould have advanced but little beyond the pre-Galilean epoch.Science, like civilization itself, is a matter of tools. It would be equally permissible to approach the subjectfrom the standpoint of processes, emphasizing the astronomersmethods of handUng his tools, rather than the tools themselves.In such a treatment there would be involved a discussion ofthe accuracy necessary in astronomical processes, the searchfor minute sources of error, the methods of measuring exceed-ingly small quantities, and the patient accumulation of details.This course would lead directly to a consideration of the natureof an astronomers work, as an element in discovery. Theobjection may perhaps be raised that the routine of astronom-ical work has little to do with discovery. The objection isnot a valid one. As a matter of fact, the work of the scientistis discovery, as clo