Sect. 3.—Scientific Societies.
The influence of Scientific Societies, or Academical Bodies, has also been very powerful in the subject before us. In all branches of knowledge, the use of such associations of studious and inquiring men is great; the clearness and coherence of a speculator’s ideas, and their agreement with facts (the two main conditions of scientific truth), are severally but beneficially tested by collision with other minds. In astronomy, moreover, the vast extent of the subject makes requisite the division of labor and the support of sympathy. The Royal Societies of London and of Paris were founded nearly at the same time as the metropolitan Observatories of the two countries. We have seen what constellations of philosophers, and what activity of research, existed at those periods; these philosophers appear in the lists, their discoveries [479] in the publications, of the above-mentioned eminent Societies. As the progress of physical science, and principally of astronomy, attracted more and more admiration, Academies were created in other countries. That of Berlin was founded by Leibnitz in 1710; that of St Petersburg was established by Peter the Great in 1725; and both these have produced highly valuable Memoirs. In more modern times these associations have multiplied almost beyond the power of estimation. They have been formed according to divisions, both of locality and of subject, conformable to the present extent of science, and the vast population of its cultivators. It would be useless to attempt to give a view either of their number or of the enormous mass of scientific literature which their Transactions present. But we may notice, as especially connected with our present subject, the Astronomical Society of London, founded in 1820, which gave a strong impulse to the pursuit of the science in England.
Sect. 4.—Patrons of Astronomy.
The advantages which letters and philosophy derive from the patronage of the great have sometimes been questioned; that love of knowledge, it has been thought, cannot be genuine which requires such stimulation, nor those speculations free and true which are thus forced into being. In the sciences of observation and calculation, however, in which disputed questions can be experimentally decided, and in which opinions are not disturbed by men’s practical principles and interests, there is nothing necessarily operating to poison or neutralize the resources which wealth and power supply to the investigation of truth.
Astronomy has, in all ages, flourished under the favor of the rich and powerful; in the period of which we speak, this was eminently the case. Louis the Fourteenth gave to the astronomy of France a distinction which, without him, it could not have attained. No step perhaps tended more to this than his bringing the celebrated Dominic Cassini to Paris. This Italian astronomer (for he was born at Permaldo, in the county of Nice, and was professor at Bologna), was already in possession of a brilliant reputation, when the French ambassador, in the name of his sovereign, applied to Pope Clement the Ninth, and to the senate of Bologna, that he should be allowed to remove to Paris. The request was granted only so far as an absence of six years; but at the end of that time, the benefits and honors which [480] the king had conferred upon him, fixed him in France. The impulse which his arrival (in 1669) and his residence gave to astronomy, showed the wisdom of the measure. In the same spirit, the French government drew to Paris Römer from Denmark, Huyghens from Holland, and gave a pension to Hevelius, and a large sum when his observatory at Dantzic had been destroyed by fire in 1679.
When the sovereigns of Prussia and Russia were exerting themselves to encourage the sciences in their countries, they followed the same course which had been so successful in France. Thus, as we have [said], the Czar Peter took Delisle to Petersburg in 1725; the celebrated Frederick the Great drew to Berlin, Voltaire and Maupertuis, Euler and Lagrange; and the Empress Catharine obtained in the same way Euler, two of the Bernoulli’s, and other mathematicians. In none of these instances, however, did it happen that “the generous plant did still its stock renew,” as we have seen was the case at Paris, with the Cassinis, and their kinsmen the Maraldis.
[2d Ed.] [I may notice among instances of the patronage of Astronomy, the reward at present offered by the King of Denmark for the discovery of a Comet.]
It is not necessary to mention here the more recent cases in which sovereigns or statesmen have attempted to patronize individual astronomers.
Sect. 5.—Astronomical Expeditions.
Besides the pensions thus bestowed upon resident mathematicians and astronomers, the governments of Europe have wisely and usefully employed considerable sums upon expeditions and travels undertaken by men of science for some appropriate object. Thus Picard, in 1671, was sent to Uraniburg, the scene of Tycho’s observations, to determine its latitude and its longitude. He found that “the City of the Skies” had utterly disappeared from the earth; and even its foundations were retraced with difficulty. With the same object, that of accurately connecting the labors of the places which had been at different periods the metropolis of astronomy, Chazelles was sent, in 1693, to Alexandria. We have already mentioned Richer’s astronomical expedition to Cayenne in 1672. Varin and Deshayes[129] were sent a few years later into the same regions for similar purposes. Halley’s expedition to St. [481] Helena in 1677, with the view of observing the southern stars, was at his own expense; but at a later period (in 1698), he was appointed to the command of a small vessel by King William the Third, in order that he might make his magnetical observations in all parts of the world. Lacaille was maintained by the French government four years at the Cape of Good Hope (1750–4), for the purpose of observing the stars of the southern hemisphere. The two transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769, occasioned expeditions to be sent to Kamtschatka and Tobolsk by the Russians; to the Isle of France, and to Coromandel, by the French;[130] to the isles of St. Helena and Otaheite by the English; to Lapland and to Drontheim, by the Swedes and Danes. I shall not here refer to the measures of degrees executed by various nations, still less the innumerable surveys by land and sea; but I may just notice the successive English expeditions of Captains Basil Hall, Sabine, and Foster, for the purpose of determining the length of the seconds’ pendulum in different latitudes; and the voyages of M. Biot and others, sent by the French government for the same purpose. Much has been done in this way, but not more than the progress of astronomy absolutely required; and only a small portion of that which the completion of the subject calls for.