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CONTENTS 1 Ian R Bartky, Norman S Rice and Christine A Bain: "An event of no ordinary interest" - The inauguration of Albany's Dudley Observatory 21 A Sinachopoulos and D Sinachopoulos: Plato's theological astronomy II. The Laws: an old man looking back 33 J E Kennedy: Airy and the survey of the Maine-New Brunswick boundary (1843-1845) 39 Jay M Pasachoff: Halley as an eclipse pioneer: his maps and observations of the total solar eclipses of 1715 and 1724 55 Ruth S Freitag: Recent publications relating to the history of astronomy 74 Reviews: The Einstein Tower: An Intertexture of Dynamk Construction, Relativity Theory, and Astronomy by Klaus Hentschel; translated by Ann M Hentschel (Alan Batten); Astronomie der Goethezeit, Textsammlung aus Zeitschriften und Briefen, Franz Xavor von Zachs, Ausgewählt und kommentiert von Peter Brosche (Ivan Nikoloff); The Eddington Enigma by David S Evans (Alan Batten) 79 Guide for Authors ooo0ooo "An Event Of No Ordinary Interest" - The Inauguration of Albany's Dudley Observatory Ian R Bartky 7804 Custer Road, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA Norman S Rice Albany Institute of History & Art, Christine A Bain Abstract The Inauguration of the Dudley Observatory was a watershed
in mid-nineteenth-century American science; most American scientists
of any note attended the event, which took place in Albany in 1856 August
at the close of the Annual Meeting of the AAAS. New York artist Tompkins
Matteson's painting of the event, which includes more than 160 portraits,
has been widely reproduced; however, an accompanying identification key
created decades later is quite erroneous and misleading. A new key,
which identifies 58 of the country's leading scientists and New York
business and political figures, has been prepared, and, in conjunction
with what is currently known about the painting's history, is detailed.
Dudley Observatory's plan to sell time to New York cities and railroads
was highlighted at the inauguration ceremony; an engraved marble
tablet linking the electrical clock depicted in Matteson's painting
to the facility's mean-time distribution system is discussed. ooo0ooo Plato's theological astronomy II. The Laws : an old man looking back A Sinachopoulos Laboratoire d'Informatique Théorique, Université Libre
de Bruxelles D Sinachopoulos National Observatory of Athens, Penteli Astronomical Station Abstract In The Laws, Plato considered astronomy as socially necessary
but espoused a metaphysical model for the heavens, in which celestial
motions were due to souls of gods. He furthermore reasoned against physical
philosophers whose ideas he found dangerous for the youth. His views
on astronomy and on the necessity "to
ignore the visible heavens" have been vividly discussed over the last
150 years. For more than 20 centuries astronomy was characterized by
the Platonic spirit, according to which there is no need for observations
but only for metaphysical theories. However Plato was not actually
concerned with astronomy and, by extension, natural sciences in general;
his central interest focused on how to govern his perfect state. Key words : Plato's The Laws, observational astronomy, evolution of astronomy, souls and motion, order ooo0ooo Airy and the survey of the Maine-New Brunswick boundary (1843-1845) J E Kennedy Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Saskatchewan, Abstract Sir G B Airy, the astute Astronomer Royal of the mid-nineteenth century, left an extensive accumulation of archival documents, now housed at Cambridge University in the UK. A small collection of Airy papers, dealing specifically with the Maine-New Brunswick boundary survey of the 1840s, is held by the National Archives of Canada at Ottawa, Canada. An outline of Airy's involvement in this combined astronomy-surveying project is presented in this paper. Key Words : Airy, surveying, instructions ooo0ooo Halley and his maps of the Total Eclipses of 1715 and
1724 Williams College--Hopkins Observatory, Abstract Edmond Halley was perhaps the first, in 1715, to draw the path of an eclipse
as seen from above, looking down at the Earth's surface. I compare four eclipse-path
maps drawn for Halley: one before the 1715 eclipse, one with a corrected path
after the eclipse and including the predicted path for the 1724 eclipse, a
reissue of that map just before the latter eclipse, and a different map for
that latter eclipse. These maps are in the collection of the Houghton Library
of Harvard University. For comparison, I provide a current map of the 1999
total solar-eclipse path, which is similar to that of 1724. ooo0ooo
Volume 2 Number 2 1999 December CONTENTS 81 Virginia Trimble: A century of drivers of astronomical progress 87 Norriss S Hetherington: Plato's place in the history of Greek astronomy: restoring both history and science to the history of science 111 Heino Eelsalu: The rise and fall of small astronomical observatories: a case study Dorpat/Tartu Observatory 125 E Danezis, E Theodossiou, M Stathopoulou and Th Grammenos: A presocratic cosmological proposal 131 Ruth S Freitag: Recent publications relating to the history of astronomy 140 Ruth S Freitag: Recent publications relating to the history of astronomy 162 Reviews: A Creation of His Own: Tappan's Detroit Observatory by Patrica S Whitesell (John W Briggs); Sky Dragons and Celestial Serpents by Alastair McBeath (Clive Davenhall); Calendars and Constellations of the Ancient World by Emmeline Plunkett (Clive Davenhall); From White Dwarfs to Black Holes: The Legacy of S Chandrasekhar edited by G Srinivasan (David DeVorkin); The Message of the Angles - Astrometry from 1798 to 1998 edited by P Brosche, W R Dick, O Schwartz and R Wielen (Clive Davenhall}; Eclipse, The celestial phenomenon which has changed the course of civilization by Steel, Duncan, (Perdrix) ooo0ooo A century of drivers of astronomical progress Virginia Trimble Physics Department and Astronomy Department Abstract The main focus of the session of papers reported here was on the interaction between new technology and astronomical discoveries in the 20th century in the areas of optical, radio, X-ray, and computational astronomy. The advent of new ideas and new people (and kinds of people) in the discipline have also been major drivers of progress. Some of these are discussed briefly here, along with a few technological items from other parts of astronomy. It is intended that the four main presentations appear in later issues of JAH2. Key words : steady state cosmology, gamma ray astronomy, twentieth century astrophysics, spectroscopy, particle physics
Plato's place in the history of Greek astronomy: restoring both history and science to the history of science Norriss S Hetherington Office for the History of Science and Technology, Abstract The history of ancient Greek geometrical astronomy often is written as a mathematical
tour de force rather than history, with technical details of quantitative geometrical
constructions the centre of attention, studied as if they were independent
of the culture within which they flourished. Much of science is eliminated
as well in focusing only on observations and the mathematical consequences
of an initial hypothesis about the fundamental character of the movements of
the planets. Plato with his philosophical vision exemplifies the influence
of humanistic concerns in ancient science more broadly conceived. This study
casts new light on both the ruling paradigm of Greek geometrical astronomy
and the long-standing debate over whether ancient Greek astronomers were instrumentalists
or realists, and also opens to view a deeper and richer understanding of science. ooo0ooo
The rise and fall of small astronomical observatories: a case study Dorpat/Tartu Observatory Heino Eelsalu Abstract The history of the Astronomical Observatory
of Dorpat/Tartu University is outlined in terms of the activities of
its most outstanding astronomers and interpreted, in particular, with
allowance for some background factors. Some emphasis is laid on describing
and analysing the role of Ernst Öplk, whose life and heritage has
so far not been treated adequately by historians of science. The problem
of preserving the treasures of the Observatory is reviewed. ooo0ooo A presocratic cosmological proposal E. Danezis, E. Theodossiou, M. Stathopoulou and Th. Grammenos Department of Astrophysics, Astronomy and
Mechanics, Abstract Alcman is known as one of the greatest lyric poets of the ancient world. However,
the publication of the Oxyrhynchus papyrus No. 2390 in 1957 caused a great
deal of excitement. This papyrus, from the second century AD, contains parts
of a comment written in prose, which implies that in one of his poems Alcman
deals with a kind of a god-created cosmogony. That cosmogonical view, formulated
by Alcman in the middle of the seventh century BC, describes much older considerations
that resemble certain modern cosmological conjectures. In terms of the latter,
the observable universe emerged out of a point singularity interior to a white
hole which, due to the time symmetry of Einstein's field equations, can be
considered as a time-reversed black hole. |
