The inspiration and the counter-inspiration of astronomical phenomena

Abstract

Astronomical phenomena are in a sense mere celestial phenomena, but actually much more. Suffice it to think of the enormous conceptual surplus which is seen in such ordinary celestial phenomena as comets, eclipses, and planetary conjunctions whenever they are seen through the eyes of astronomy and not merely with the naked eye, strengthened as this eye may be by geometry. The surplus in question should seem even more obvious in reference to such extraordinary celestial phenomena as supernovae. Whatever the relative unimportance of their motion through space, their mostly spectroscopic study too rests on the full formulation, since the times of Newton, of the three laws of motion.' It is on the application, immediate or remote, of those laws that all physical science, including astronomy, rests. This distinction between mere celestial phenomena and astronomical phenomena bears also on the inspiration which they respectively produce. Let us take the respective reactions to the same kind of phenomena, supernovae, between I 054 and 1987. In fune I 054 Chinese stargazers spotted a novel bright spot in the sky which, not surprisingly, they took for a guest star (hho hsing), the Chinese name for comets. The fact that it did not infringe on Aldebaran inspired in them the view that the rule of the emperor would be beneficial.' Such an inspiration belongs in the class of vain hopes and unnecessary fears triggered by comets and other celestial phenomena listed above. The prospect of removing such fears from the human mind was, in fact, a chief benefit which Halley celebrated in the ode he prefixed to Newton's Principia. 3 Inspiring as this prospect could be, it remained for long but a prospect and not a result to be shared broadly.