"The third (Victoria ...), although only published in September, 1863, has already had its triumph. It is the book that forced the Astronomer Royal of England, after publicly teaching the contrary for years, to come to the conclusion, "strange as it may appear," that "the whole question of solar motion in space is at the present time in doubt and abeyance." This admission is made in the Annual Report of the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society, published in the Society's Monthly Notices for February, 1864."
It is added that solar motion is "full of self-contradiction, which "the astronomers" simply overlooked, but which they dare not now deny after being once pointed out."
The following is another of his accounts of the matter, given in the Correspondent, No. 18, 1865:
"... You ought, when you came to put me in the 'Budget,' to have been aware of the Report of the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society, where it appears that Professor Airy,[[654]] with a better appreciation of my demonstrations, had admitted—'strange,' say the Council, 'as it may appear,'—that 'the whole question of solar motion in space [and here Mr. Reddie omits some words] is now in doubt and abeyance.' You were culpable as a public teacher of no little pretensions, if you were 'unaware' of this. If aware of it, you ought not to have suppressed such an important testimony to my really having been 'very successful' in drawing the teeth of the pegtops, though you thought them so firmly fixed. And if you still suppress it, in your Appendix, or when you reprint your 'Budget,' you will then be guilty of a suppressio veri, also of further injury to me, who have never injured you...."
Mr. Reddie must have been very well satisfied in his own mind before he ventured such a challenge, with an answer from me looming in the distance. The following is the passage of the Report of the Council, etc., from which he quotes:
"And yet, strange to say, notwithstanding the near coincidence of all the results of the before-mentioned independent methods of investigation, the inevitable logical inference deduced by Mr. Airy is, that the whole question of solar motion in space, so far at least as accounting for the proper motion of the stars is concerned, [I have put in italics the words omitted by Mr. Reddie] appears to remain at this moment in doubt and abeyance."
Mr. Reddie has forked me, as he thinks, on a dilemma: if unaware, culpable ignorance; if aware, suppressive intention. But the thing is a trilemma, and the third horn, on which I elect to be placed, is surmounted by a doubly-stuffed seat. First, Mr. Airy has not changed his opinion about the fact of solar motion in space, but only suspends it as to the sufficiency of present means to give the amount and direction of the motion. Secondly, all that is alluded to in the Astronomical Report was said and printed before the Victoria proclamation appeared. So that the author, instead of drawing the tooth of the Astronomer Royal's pegtop, has burnt his own doll's nose.
William Herschel,[[655]] and after him about six other astronomers, had aimed at determining, by the proper motions of the stars, the point of the heavens towards which the solar system is moving: their results were tolerably accordant. Mr. Airy, in 1859, proposed an improved method, and, applying it to stars of large proper motion, produced
much the same result as Herschel. Mr. E. Dunkin,[[656]] one of Mr. Airy's staff at Greenwich, applied Mr. Airy's method to a very large number of stars, and produced, again, nearly the same result as before. This paper was read to the Astronomical Society in March, 1863, was printed in abstract in the Notice of that month, was printed in full in the volume then current, and was referred to in the Annual Report of the Council in February, 1864, under the name of "the Astronomer Royal's elaborate investigation, as exhibited by Mr. Dunkin." Both Mr. Airy and Mr. Dunkin express grave doubts as to the sufficiency of the data: and, regarding the coincidence of all the results as highly curious, feel it necessary to wait for calculations made on better data. The report of the Council states these doubts. Mr. Reddie, who only published in September, 1863, happened to see the Report of February, 1864, assumes that the doubts were then first expressed, and declares that his book of September had the triumph of forcing the Astronomer Royal to abandon the fact of motion of the solar system by the February following. Had Mr. Reddie, when he saw that the Council were avowedly describing a memoir presented some time before, taken the precaution to find out when that memoir was presented, he would perhaps have seen that doubts of the results obtained, expressed by one astronomer in March, 1863, and by another in 1859, could not have been due to his publication of September, 1863. And any one else would have learnt that neither astronomer doubts the solar motion, though both doubt the sufficiency of present means to determine its amount and direction. This is implied in the omitted words, which Mr. Reddie—whose omission would have been dishonest if he had seen their meaning—no doubt took for pleonasm, superfluity, overmuchness. The rashness which pushed him headlong
into the quillet that his thunderbolt had stopped the chariot of the Sun and knocked the Greenwich Phaeton off the box, is the same which betrayed him into yet grander error—which deserves the full word, quidlibet—about the Principia of Newton. There has been no change of opinion at all. When a person undertakes a long investigation, his opinion is that, at a certain date, there is prima facie ground for thinking a sound result may be obtained. Should it happen that the investigation ends in doubt upon the sufficiency of the grounds, the investigator is not put in the wrong. He knew beforehand that there was an alternative: and he takes the horn of the alternative indicated by his calculations. The two sides of this case present an instructive contrast. Eight astronomers produce nearly the same result, and yet the last two doubt the sufficiency of their means: compare them with the what's-his-name who rushes in where thing-em-bobs fear to tread.