"Astronomical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... astronomical principle is to the division of time, as marked out by the periodical movements of the heavenly bodies. The Hebrews combined in their calculations a reference to the sun and to the moon, so as to avail themselves of the natural measure supplied by each. Their ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... most important post of the Hudson's Bay Company to the west of the Rocky Mountains in the far north. In 1869 the Hudson's Bay Company's officer was expelled from Fort Yukon by the United States Government, they haying ascertained by astronomical observations that the post was not located in British territory. The officer thereupon ascended the Porcupine to a point which was supposed to be within British jurisdiction, where he established Rampart House; but in 1890 Mr. J.H. Turner of ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... Dante (Inferno, XI. 96-105), with its reference to Aristotle, would have given him the meaning of "Nature taught art," which seems to puzzle him. A study of Dante and of his earlier commentators would also have been of great service in the astronomical notes. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... studies on astrology and mathematics. The Macrocosm, the heavens that "declare the glory of God," reflect, as in a mirror, the Microcosm, the daily life of man on earth. The first step was the identification of the sun, moon and stars with the gods of the pantheon. Assyrian astronomical observations show an extraordinary development of practical knowledge. The movements of the sun and moon and of the planets were studied; the Assyrians knew the precession of the equinoxes and many of the fundamental ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... degrees. Selecting a level plain in Mesopotamia for the experiment, one party of the surveyors progressed northward, another party southward, from a given point to the distance of one degree of arc, as determined by astronomical observations. The result found was fifty-six miles for the northern degree, and fifty-six and two-third miles for the southern. Unfortunately, we do not know the precise length of the mile in question, and therefore cannot be assured as to the accuracy of the measurement. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the hermit, turning abruptly to a small wooden shed which had hitherto escaped the youth's observation, so covered was it with overhanging boughs and tropical creeping plants, "these are my astronomical instruments." ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... atrocious, and in June building the Astronomical Hut and digging ice-shafts on the glacier absorbed a good many hands. In July, despite the enthusiasm and preparation for sledging, much was done. On August 10 the long looked-for top-mast of the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... hazy; and this is caused by the falling of impalpably fine dust, which was found to have slightly injured the astronomical instruments. The morning before we anchored at Porto Praya, I collected a little packet of this brown-coloured fine dust, which appeared to have been filtered from the wind by the gauze of the vane at the mast-head. Mr. Lyell has also given me four packets of dust which fell ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... authority has been seen to oppose itself to "Natural Selection," by limiting, on astronomical and physical grounds, the duration of life on this planet to about one hundred million years. This period, it has been contended, is not nearly enough on the one hand for the evolution of all organic forms by the exclusive action of mere minute, fortuitous ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... his "Curiosities of Literature." Dr Power, a friend of Sir T. Browne, with whom he corresponded, fives a receipt for the process. 68. The celebrated Greek philosopher who taught that the sun was a mass of heated stone, and various other astronomical doctrines. Some critics say Anaxarchus is meant here. 69. See Milton's "Paradise Lost," ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... blazing, brilliant and hot. Other times it was oddly dim, cool, shedding little warmth on its many planets. Gresth Gkae, leader of the Mirans, was seeking a better star, one to which his "people" could migrate. That star had to be steady, reliable, with a good planetary system. And in his astronomical searching, he ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... Julian Academy, 1889; Temple gold medal, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1889; bronze medal, Paris Exposition, 1889. Member of the Copley Society, Boston; of the Society of Baron Taylor, Paris; and of the Paris Astronomical Society. Born in San Francisco. Pupil of the Julian Academy, under Robert-Fleury, and Jules Lefebvre, where she received, in 1888, the prize of the silver medal and one hundred francs—the highest award given at the annual Portrait Concours, between ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... eclipse of 601, all the other eclipses, so far as days of the moon and month go, are as consistent with each other as are modern Chinese dates with European (Julian) dates. As regards the year, Oppolzer's dates are the "astronomical" dates, that is, the astronomical year—x is the same as the year (x 1) B.C.; or, in other words, the year of Christ's birth is, for certain astronomical exactitude purposes, interpolated between the years 1 B.C. and A.D. 1, as we vulgarly compute ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... brought a beautiful magic lantern with a dissolving-view apparatus for our people's amusement and instruction, for some of the slides were painted by Miss Rigaud to illustrate the life of our Lord, and there were many astronomical slides also. All these treasures brought us numerous visitors. The Chinese Christians were all invited to a feast at our house, after which the magic lantern was exhibited, and we were glad to find that our school-children could explain ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... early decades of the seventeenth century, the men of the Renaissance could show that they had already put out to good interest the treasure bequeathed to them by the Greeks. They had produced the astronomical system of Copernicus, with Kepler's great additions; the astronomical discoveries and the physical investigations of Galileo; the mechanics of Stevinus and the 'De Magnete' of Gilbert; the anatomy of the great French ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... as incredulous and as set in their opposition to Cosmo Versal's extraordinary out- givings as those of America. They decried his science and denounced his predictions as the work of a fool or a madman. The president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain proved to the satisfaction of most of his colleagues that a nebula could not possibly contain enough water to drown an asteroid, let alone ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... of August and September, 1835. The sensation created by this immense imposture, not only throughout the United States, but in every part of the civilized world, and the consummate ability with which it was written, will render it interesting so long as our language shall endure; and, indeed, astronomical science has actually been indebted to it for many most valuable hints—a circumstance that gives the production a still higher ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... of four hours through a ravine which gradually opened out upon this beautiful "park," but we rode through it for some miles before the view burst upon us. The vastness of this range, like astronomical distances, can hardly be conceived of. At this place, I suppose, it is not less than 250 miles wide, and with hardly a break in its continuity, it stretches almost from the Arctic Circle to the Straits of Magellan. From ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... our progress. The island and rapid of Nakansalo, of which we had formerly heard, were of no importance, the rapid being but half a mile long, and only on one side of the island. The island Kaluzi marks one of the numerous places where astronomical observations were made; Mozia, a station where a volunteer poet left us; the island Mochenya, and Mpande island, at the mouth of the Zungwe rivulet, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... best years succeeding in everything except the things that are worth while? I'll be thirty sooner than I care to say, and—oh, well, you won't understand. You'll sit down there, with the Southern Cross and the rest of the infernal astronomical galaxy looking down on you, and the Indians chanting in the village, and you will think I have grown sentimental. I have not. You and I down there have been looking at the world through the reverse end of ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Ireland the Round Towers are regarded as one of the results of an intimate connection between Ireland and the East, and are spoken of as either—1, Fire Temples; 2, Stations from whence Druid festivals were announced; 3, Sun-dials (gnomons) and astronomical observatories; 4, Buddhist or Phallic temples, or two or more of these uses are attributed to them at ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... ten, and even of twenty feet focal distance, crown his efforts. As if to answer in advance those critics who would have accused him of a superfluity of apparatus, of unnecessary luxury, in the large size of the new instruments, and his extreme minutiae in their execution, Nature granted to the astronomical musician, on the 13th of March 1781, the unheard-of honour of commencing his career of observation with the discovery of a new planet, situated on the confines of our solar system. Dating from that moment, Herschel's ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... the senior, "you'll know him when you see him again. You put your mark on him where you can see it, all right!" He chuckled. "I suppose I really ought to have interfered in that, but I decided to do a little astronomical observation, about fifty feet away, for a few minutes. I'm 'way behind in my astronomy, anyhow. Do you know this ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... its fellows, not as a mere continuation, or even intensification, of them—a hundred annual circuits of the earth in its orbit as little distinguished by intellectual or material achievement as those repetitions of the old beaten track through space are by astronomical incident—but as an epoch sui generis, a century d'elite, picked out from the long ranks of time for special service, charged by Fate with an extraordinary duty, and decorated for its successful performance. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... aware that the obvious astronomical allegory, which lurks in Chaucer's "Complaint of Mars and Venus," has been pointed out, or that any attempt has been made to explain it. In Tyrwhitt's slight notice of that poem, prefixed to his glossary, there is not the most remote ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... located at the center of the heavenly bodies and around which they all revolved, while a very pleasing theological conception, was absolutely fatal to any instruction in astronomy worth while and to any astronomical advance. All mediaeval astronomy, too, was saturated with astrology, as the selection on the motion of the heavenly bodies reproduced from Bartholomew Anglicus shows (R. 77 b), and the supernatural was invoked to explain such phenomena as meteors, comets, and eclipses. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... creation for the human divisions of time; and the looked-for harmony between the Biblical days and the geological periods of the earth would by no means be established by such an identification of the days of creation with the periods of the world: for the geological or even the cosmic and astronomical periods are nowhere in congruity with the Biblical days ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... Quixote did not appear till 1605; but Cervantes was then nearly sixty.] Spenser and Marlowe and Shakespeare, as well as Montaigne. But even in the first half of the century, Copernicus enunciated the new theory that the Sun, not the Earth, is the centre of the astronomical system; and before the end of our period, the new methods had established themselves in the field of science, to be first formulated early in the new century by one who had already mastered and applied them, Francis Bacon. Essentially, the modern Scientific Method was the product ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... powers in a pocket telescope not more than fourteen inches long when extended, and magnifying ten or twelve times. It became his dream, which was afterward realized, to possess a more powerful telescope, a real astronomical glass, with which he could see the beauties of the double stars, the craters of the moon, the spots on the sun, the belts and satellites of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, the extraordinary shapes of the nebulae, the crowds of stars in the Milky ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... and retrogression of numbers in groups expressed by the multiplication table gives rise to what may be termed "numerical conjunctions." These are analogous to astronomical conjunctions: the planets, revolving around the sun at different rates of speed, and in widely separated orbits, at certain times come into line with one another and with the sun. They are then said to be in conjunction. ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Syriac into Arabic the pandects by the presbyter Aaron, a famous medical work of the middle ages. In the annals of the next century, among the early contributors to Arabic literature, we meet with the names of Jews as translators of medical, mathematical, and astronomical works, and as grammarians, astronomers, scientists, and physicians. A Jew translated Ptolemy's "Almagest"; another assisted in the first translation of the Indian fox fables (Kalila we-Dimna); the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... shoals, the sunken rocks and dangerous quicksands, and he accompanied his work with various maps and charts, both general and special, of land and water, rarely delineated before his day, as well as by various astronomical and mathematical calculations. Already a countryman of his own, Wagenaar of Zeeland, had laid the mariners of the world under special obligation by a manual which came into such universal use that for centuries afterwards the sailors of England and of other countries called their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... work, and with less food, than any other draught animal existing. On the night of the 20th Lieutenant Schwatka observed a meridian culmination of the moon, which showed in latitude 67 deg. 32 min. 42 sec. north, only three miles from our reckoning. It is a difficult task to make astronomical observations with a sextant in a temperature thirty-eight degrees below zero, or seventy below the freezing-point, as it was this night. It is not pleasant to sit still for any length of time in ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... It will then, very likely, appear quite simple, and you will be astonished that you did not make it out before. You will find the Nautical Almanac very useful, not only in giving you an idea of astronomical problems, but also for ascertaining the particulars of any strange stars you may see, or where to look for the different planets, etc. With the help of the twelve maps you will soon be acquainted with all the principal ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... of the colossi) clearly points to 453 B.C. as the year of the building. At all events, Barth, Stevenson, Gibson, Reeves, and some other scientists, who being Westerns can have none of the prejudices proper to the native Pundits, have formed this conjecture on the basis of some astronomical data. Besides, the conjunction of the planets stated in the inscription leaves no doubt as to the dates, it must be either 453 B.C., or 1734 of our era, or 2640 B.C., which last is impossible, because Buddha and Buddhist monasteries are mentioned in the inscription. I translate some of the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... afforded; but man is a tool-making creature, and in very early days he began to invent instruments which helped him in inquiry. The earliest deliberate study was of the stars. Science began with astronomy, and the first instruments which men contrived for the purpose of investigation were astronomical. In the beginning of this search the stars were studied in order to measure the length of the year, and also for the reason that they were supposed in some way to control the fate of men. So far as we know, the first pieces of apparatus for this purpose were invented ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... I discovered many astronomical facts till then unknown. Their novelty and their antagonism to some physical propositions commonly received by the schools did stir up against me many who professed the vulgar philosophy, as if, forsooth, I had with my own hand placed these things ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... useful as teachers and in various handicrafts. They were especially in demand among the superstitious for their skill in casting horoscopes, using divining rods, and carving potent amulets. Their mysterious astronomical tower on the heights of the Wissahickon was the Mecca of the curious and the distressed. To the gentle Kelpius was ascribed the power of healing, but he was himself the victim of consumption. The brotherhood did not long survive his death in 1708 or 1709. Their astrological instruments may be ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... contributed to the "Quarterly Review" on Graves' life of the great mathematician. The remaining chapters now appear for the first time. For many of the facts contained in the sketch of the late Professor Adams, I am indebted to the obituary notice written by my friend Dr. J. W. L. Glaisher, for the Royal Astronomical Society; while with regard to the late Sir George Airy, I have a similar acknowledgment to make to Professor H. H. Turner. To my friend Dr. Arthur A. Rambaut I owe my hearty thanks for his kindness in aiding me in the revision of ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... ASTRONOMICAL IDEAS. Animals frequently have a part to play in relation to the constellations. Throughout the codices and, to a less degree, in the stone carvings, we find what have usually been considered to be glyphs for several of the constellations. Numerous calculations in the codices make ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... spirit, been sometimes described as Druidical amulets and talismen; ornamented rings and bosses from the ancient rich Celtic horse-harness, discovered in sepulchral barrows, have been published as Druidical astronomical instruments; and in the last century some columnar rock arrangement in Orkney was gravely adduced by Toland as a Druidical pavement. It is this craving after the mysterious, this reprehensible ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... invention would violate a greater number of known analogies; for if a theory be required to embrace some false principle, it becomes more visionary in proportion as facts are multiplied, as would be the case if geometers were now required to form an astronomical system on the assumption of the ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... mathematician and civil engineer, and had long been in correspondence with leading scientists in different parts of the country. His work in determining altitudes of Vermont mountains is accepted as authority. For thirty-eight years he made astronomical calculations for the Vermont Register, also many years for the New Hampshire Register, and had long kept a meteorological record for ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... sun's eclipse took place, and was very plainly visible to the naked eye, agreeably to the calculation for its commencement and termination. I took the occasion of its termination (four o'clock, fifty minutes) to set my watch by astronomical time. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... suggest another parallel between things astronomical and things spiritual. He supposes an objector admits the size as proved, but demurs as to the importance of these heavenly bodies. "They are, perhaps, only unsubstantial froth, mere puffs of air, vapoury nothings." But the astronomer knows their mass and weight, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... carefully worked over and re-written to adapt it to the special requirements. Great pains has been taken not to sacrifice accuracy and truth to brevity, and no less to bring everything thoroughly down to date. The latest results of astronomical investigation will be found here. The author has endeavored, too, while discarding mathematics, to give the student a clear understanding and a good grasp of the subject. As a body of information and as a means of discipline, ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... to proceed with your explanations, Doctor? If you deny the annual revolution of the earth, in what manner do you account for the changes of the seasons, and other astronomical phenomena, such as the eclipses which so ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Pharaoh used upon the Nile was three hundred and thirty feet long, and was fitted with state rooms and private rooms of considerable size. Another vessel contained, besides the ordinary cabins, large bath-rooms, a library, and an astronomical observatory. It had eight towers, in which there were machines capable of hurling stones weighing three hundred pounds or more, and arrows eighteen feet in length. These huge vessels were built some two centuries before Caesar landed ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... historians) Galician rather than Castilian in dialect, and an alchemical medley of verse and prose called the Tesoro. These, if they be his, he may have written for himself and by himself. But for his Astronomical Tables, a not unimportant point de repere in astronomical history, he must, as for the legal works already mentioned and others, have been largely indebted. There seems to be much doubt about a prose Tresor, which is or is not a translation of the famous work of Brunetto Latini ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... is famous for its immense fortifications, its Minster, or Cathedral, and the Astronomical ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... motions of the great sea of electric fluid which surrounds us, in connection with its great specific, caloric. If we are chargeable with overweening pretensions, let it be attributed to the fact that for the last fifteen years we have treated the weather as an astronomical phenomenon, calculated by simple formulae, and that the evidence of its truth has been almost daily presented to us, so as to render it by this time one of the most familiar and palpable of all the great fundamental laws of ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... or does the soul of man govern it? Shall we adore his soul? Some Pantheists have got just to this length. M. Comte declares, that "At this present time, for minds properly familiarized with true astronomical philosophy, the heavens display no other glory than that of Hipparchus, or Kepler, or Newton, and of all who have helped to establish these laws." Establish these laws! Laws by which the heavenly bodies were guided thousands ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... to the King of the Reverend Dr. Kennedy's Complete System of Astronomical Chronology, unfolding ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... narrative relates to the natives; whether they have been molested by the half-savage whalers, or are treacherous by habit, it was found necessary to be constantly on the watch against their spears. The parties who were sent on shore merely to take astronomical observations, were assailed, and were sometimes forced to retaliate. Instead of the generally thin and meagre population of Australia, some of those tribes were numerous, and of striking figure, especially ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the specimens of their artistic attainments in drawing and sculpture which have reached us in the bas-reliefs, statues and mural paintings of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza; by their knowledge in mathematical and astronomical sciences, as manifested in the construction of the gnomon found by me in the ruins of Mayapan; by the complexity of the grammatical form and syntaxis of their language, still spoken to-day by the majority of the inhabitants ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... the numerous relics of antiquity contained in the museums of Mexico, and scattered about in the archaeological collections of Europe and America. The celebrated calendar stone found buried in the Plaza Mayor of Mexico, and now preserved in that city, demonstrates the astronomical advancement of the Aztecs in an incontrovertible manner, and that monument alone would ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... geologist, basing his calculations upon the time required for the depositions of the stratified rocks, put the minimum age at thirty-eight million years and the maximum age at ninety-six million years. Sir George Darwin, basing his calculation wholly upon astronomical data, puts the earth's age at a minimum of fifty-six million years. Joly arrived at his estimate by a calculation of the time required to produce the sodium content of the ocean, and concluded that the age of the earth is between eighty ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... fall of the angels, and of a progeny of giants that sprung from the union of these exiled celestials with the daughters of men; it takes Enoch on a tour of observation through heaven and earth under the guidance of angels, who explain to him many things supernal and mundane; it deals in astronomical and meteorological mysteries of various sorts, and in a series of symbolical visions seeks to disclose the events of the future. It is a grotesque production; one does not find much spiritual nutriment in it, but Jude makes a quotation from it, in his ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... of miles on all sides of its glowing red core. This mammoth star did not look so cold now, as they stared at it in the viewscreen, yet among the family of stars it was a cold, dying giant with only a few moments of life left on the astronomical time scale. From the Lancet's position, no planets at all were visible to the naked eye, but with the telescope Jack soon found two inside the star's envelope of gas and one tiny one outside. They would have to be searched for, and the one that ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... eclipses, I have notes upon several of them that did not occur upon scheduled time, though with differences only of seconds—and one delightful lost soul, deep-buried, but buried in the ultra-respectable records of the Royal Astronomical Society, upon an eclipse that did not occur at all. That delightful, ultra-sponsored thing of perdition is too good and malicious to be dismissed with passing ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... herewith communicate, for the information of Congress, a report of the Secretary of War, with accompanying documents, showing the progress made during the present year in the astronomical observations made under the act of the 14th of July, 1832, relative to the northern boundary of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... wish, for one reason, to put myself under any money obligations to Captain Burton; and, for another reason, I thought I had paid enough for a public cause in the Somali country, without having gained any advantage to myself. Captain Burton, however, knew nothing of astronomical surveying, of physical geography, or of collecting specimens of natural history, so he pressed me again to go with him, and even induced the President of the Royal Geographical Society to say there need be no fear of money if we only succeeded. I then consented to go, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... those of his predecessors." Not only indeed did Bacon fail to anticipate the methods of modern science, but he even rejected the great scientific discoveries of his own day. He set aside with the same scorn the astronomical theory of Copernicus and the magnetic investigations of Gilbert. The contempt seems to have been fully returned by the scientific workers of his day. "The Lord Chancellor wrote on science," said Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... interior was covered with ruins, and through the holes in the vault of the nave one could see the blue sky. The beautiful Organ built by Silbermann was pierced by a shell and the magnificent painted windows were in great part spoiled. Fortunately the celebrated astronomical ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... completed till 1677; stone was scarce, and the restoration of London and its Cathedral swallowed up the produce of the quarries. "It was at first used," says Elmes, "by the members of the Royal Society, for astronomical experiments, but was abandoned on account of its vibrations being too great for the nicety required in their observations. This occasioned a report that it was unsafe; but its scientific construction may bid defiance to the attacks of all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... quivering symbol of the unknown things that were rushing upon us out of the inhuman void, before I rebelled? But at last I could stand it no longer, and I reproached Parload very bitterly for wasting his time in "astronomical dilettantism." ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... circles were Druidic temples, that human sacrifices were offered on the "altar-stone," and libations of blood poured into the cup-markings, must be given up, along with much of the astronomical lore associated with the circles. Stonehenge dates from the close of the Neolithic Age, and most of the smaller circles belong to the early Bronze Age, and are probably pre-Celtic. In any case they were primarily ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Paracelsians and Platonists hold, the higher the more noble, [3082]full of birds, or a mere vacuum to no purpose? It is much controverted between Tycho Brahe and Christopher Rotman, the landgrave of Hesse's mathematician, in their astronomical epistles, whether it be the same Diaphanum clearness, matter of air and heavens, or two distinct essences? Christopher Rotman, John Pena, Jordanus Brunus, with many other late mathematicians, contend it is the same and one matter throughout, saving that the higher still the purer it is, and more ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... there was no ceremonious changing of bed linen under such circumstances, so I had learned to nip all fastidious notions of individual cleanliness in the bud, and to accept the inevitable. When the time arrived for retiring, the Governor and the brothers went out to make astronomical observations or smoke, as the case might be, while the sisters and I made our evening toilet, and disposed ourselves in the allotted corners. That done, the stalwart sons of Adam made their beds with skins and blankets on the floor. When ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... not be supposed that the rest of the party listened to this astronomical lecture. The gallant Louis had sought to interest Elsie as well as Cora, but Elsie was too much engrossed with the way-worn hunters and their sad tale to think of anything else. When they had eaten enough to check the fierce cravings of ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... piers, openings, &c., is perfectly exact; and, in the Parthenon, the patient investigations of Mr. Penrose and other skilled observers have disclosed a degree of accuracy as well as refinement which resembles the precision with which astronomical instruments are adjusted in Europe at the present day, rather than the rough-and-ready measurements of a modern mason ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... day when we were speaking of observatories and astronomical instruments, the Regent asked us if we would allow him to examine the curious, strange-looking machine that we kept in a box. He meant the microscope.... One of us ran home, and returned with the wonderful instrument. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... not the city of Jaipur, however, which merits our chief attention, though the maharaja's town-palace and his quaint astronomical observatory are both of them deeply interesting. This observatory has no tower and no telescope. It shows what can be done by sun-dials and structures almost level with the ground to mark the movements of the heavenly bodies, ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... 49.) tells, that in the tomb of Osymandyas (palace of Rameses II. at Thebes) there lay a circle of gold, one ell thick and 365 ells in circumference, containing a complete astronomical calendar. The circle of the zodiac from Dendera, which is now in Paris,—an astronomical ceiling painting, which was believed at the time of its discovery to be of great age, is not nearly so ancient as was supposed, dating only from the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Letronne was the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hut, though displaying great originality of design, and ingenious artistic effects, becomes after a time rather a tiresome object of contemplation. The colonel found it so, and he relieved his strained eyes by an occasional amateur astronomical observation. On turning his head, with a yawn, from one of these, he saw inside the hut a state of affairs which caused him to ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... young woman: for instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or algebra, or simony, or fluxions, or paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning; neither would it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments. But, Sir Anthony, I would send her at nine years old to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice. Then, sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts; and as she grew up I would have her instructed ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... Galileo's Dialogo, which he may have been reading even as he wrote.[2] Indeed, More tries to harmonize the two poems—his habit was always to look for unity. But even though Democritus Platonissans explores an astronomical subject, just as the third part of Psychathanasia also does, its attitude and theme are quite different; for More had ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... book. Still, I can take but little of the blame, when I consider how I fared through my geography, right to the end of the grammar-school course. I did in time disentangle the symbolism of the orange revolving on a knitting-needle from the astronomical facts in the case, but it took years of training under a master of the subject to rid me of my distrust of the map as a representation of the earth. To this day I sometimes blunder back to my early impression that any given portion of the earth's surface is ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... a prodigious number of tracts, pamphlets, commentaries, and biblical expositions in support of his particular view of Christianity; but the works for which he is now remembered are his astronomical and mechanical papers and his well-known translation of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... erecting an observatory and telescope, in order to sweep our sky and render visible what I am convinced exist there undiscovered—some of those deep blue nebulae which Sir John Herschel found in the southern hemisphere! If the astronomical conjectures be correct, concerning the possibility of a galaxy of blue stars, a huge cluster hangs in this neighborhood and furnishes an explanation of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... a small case which contained books, the latest astronomical data sheets, and a space computer and scratch board. These were obviously for Rip's personal use. He examined them. There were all the references he would need for computing orbit, speed, and just about anything else that might be required. He had ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... of the voyages of Captain Cook to Tahiti and other islands in the Pacific. Tahiti had been previously discovered by a Captain Wallis, and Cook was sent out there in order to make some astronomical observations that could not be done in Europe. The island was very verdant, and it was scarcely necessary for its people to work at all, so that they were very indolent. They were also inclined to steal, although they realised that it ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree. But Herbert Spencer, in his headlong imperialism, would insist that we had in some way been conquered and annexed by the astronomical universe. He spoke about men and their ideals exactly as the most insolent Unionist talks about the Irish and their ideals. He turned mankind into a small nationality. And his evil influence can be seen even in the most spirited and honourable of later scientific authors; ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... Corniche road. If on foot, on arriving at a well beside a house, ascend the hill by the mule-path. The views are charming. The establishment possesses 1235 acres of land. On the highest part are the various buildings for astronomical purposes. Afew yards below, on the west side of the mountain, is a handsome building 228 ft. long and 46 broad. In the centre is the library, and the wing at ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... had now reached near the point where the north and south fork of the Platte river unite. Lieutenant Fremont wished to explore the south branch, to obtain some astronomical observations, and to determine the mouths of its tributaries as far as St. Vrain's fort. He also hoped to obtain some mules there which he greatly needed. He took with him nine men. The three Cheyenne Indians ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... could poor Ahmed do? He was no astrologer, but he was dotingly fond of his wife, and he could not bear the idea of losing her. He promised to obey, and having sold his little stock, bought an astrolabe, an astronomical almanac, and a table of the twelve signs of the zodiac. Furnished with these, he went to the marketplace, crying, "I am an astrologer! I know the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the twelve signs of the zodiac; I can calculate nativities; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune, nor outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause any very great excitement. Scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known that the new body was ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... of the Stars", by Leo Fritter, is the leading feature of the issue. The inspiring influence of astronomical study on the cultivated intellect is here shown to best advantage. Mr. Fritter traces the slow unfolding of celestial knowledge to the world, and points out the divinity of that mental power which enables man to discern the vastness of the universe, and to comprehend the complex ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... for the benefit of which he thought and worked during the long period which elapsed between his leaving the quarter-deck and his death; as his Charts (constructed from his numerous surveys), his twenty years' Essays in the United Service Journal, his efforts to render his astronomical researches ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... rationally. His contemporary, Hippocrates, regarded diseases as of divine origin, and Plato believed that the sun and stars were animated gods with their souls (Philebus, cap. xvi., Laws, x.), and only permitted astronomical investigation so long as it abstained from blasphemy against these gods. And Aristotle in his Physics tells us that Zeus rains not in order that the corn may grow, but by necessity (ex anharchest). ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... "Fine. Now, the Egyptian Astronomical Society has just finished constructing a new radio telescope. It's a first-rate instrument from which we expect great things. Your father and I were in at its birth, so to speak. We consulted on the initial designs during a meeting of the ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... ring encircling an astronomical body, but not infrequently confounded with "aureola," or "nimbus," a somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... kindred things by dissection and in embryology—I had checked the whole theory of development again in a year's course of palaeontology, and I had taken the dimensions of the whole process, by the scale of the stars, in a course of astronomical physics. And all that amount of objective elucidation came before I had reached the beginnings of any philosophical or metaphysical inquiry, any inquiry as to why I believed, how I believed, what I believed, or what the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... in use, the thermograph, that utilizes the heat rays from the sun, instead of the light. It takes pictures by heat; in other words, it sees in the dark; brings invisible things to the eye of man, and is used in astronomical and physical researches wherein undulations and radiations are concerned. And now comes the magnetometer, to measure the amount of magnetism that reaches the earth from the sun. It points to zero when the magnetic forces of the earth are in equilibrium, but let a magnetic storm ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... hard to explain. It's this way. I hev a mighty fine plan in my mind founded on a mixin' up of astronomical considerations ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... possibly be used on the ice of the polar sea, as it would be smashed to pieces in the rough going. One might say in general that dead reckoning on the polar ice is the personal estimate of approximate distance, always checked and corrected from time to time by astronomical observations. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief among archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount to ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... increased. Greater importance was laid upon the detail of the ceremonies, the attention of the worshipper being turned from the deities "to the minutiae of rites, the erection of altars, the fixing of the proper astronomical moments for lighting the fire, the correct pronunciation of prayers, and to the various requisite acts accompanying a sacrifice."[6] In the chapter of decay which time wrote and literature reflects, we find "grotesque reasons given for every minute rite, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... from a distance, talking to the waves and listening to the rolling and hissing of the surf, as though he could hear the answering voice of the spirit of the sea. Upon the topmost summit of the watch-tower he had a sort of study fitted up and supplied with telescopes—with a complete set of astronomical apparatus, in fact. Thence during the daytime he frequently watched the ships sailing past on the distant horizon like white-winged sea-gulls; and there he spent the starlight nights engaged in astronomical, or, as some professed to ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the other emblems of divinity we find the heads of dogs, cats, apes, and birds, and also rude figures of the boats of Isis, establishing a connection between the Egyptian and Phœnician mythologies. Some exhibit astronomical and astrological symbols. Other images appear to be carrying cakes, a part of the offering made to Astarte, to which Jeremiah alludes:—“The women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... infinitely superior to what 'supernaturalism' and its legitimate child monarchism, or its bastard issue, caucus-and-ballot-boxism, are capable of. From the dissecting-room, the chemical laboratory, the astronomical observatory, the physician's and physiologist's study—in fine, from all the schools of science and arts should human law be declared, instead of being 'enacted' in legislative halls by those who in every respect besides political trickery, ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... in his chair and looked at it. An old eight-day clock it was, which not only told the time of the day, but pretended, also, to supply miscellaneous astronomical information. It stood ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... get a more simple and exact idea, let us observe the means which those who have studied the heavens have taken to illustrate astronomical facts. There is an astronomical toy called the orrery, which can be made, by proper mechanism, to represent, with tolerable accuracy, the actual motions of the planets in their orbits, and which can serve to illustrate the phenomena which ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... Reaction of the Divine Act which irradiated all things from Unity. In fact no point of my theory has been even so much as alluded to by Laplace. I have not considered it necessary, here to speak of the astronomical knowledge displayed in the 'stars and suns' of the Student of Theology, nor to hint that it would be better to say that 'development and formation are, than that development and formation is. The third misrepresentation lies in a foot-note, where the critic says:—'Further than ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... miles west of the Rhine. The city is of considerable antiquity, and boasts a cathedral of great beauty, in which the work of four centuries is displayed to wonderful advantage. By the light of the stained-glass windows the famous astronomical clock in the south transept can be descried, still containing some fragments of the horologe constructed by the mathematician Conrad Dasypodius in 1574. This, however, does not tally with the well-known legend of the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... possible escape from the grimness of the planet's dissolution has been followed up with careful search. The discovery of radioactivity seemed to promise endlessly extended life to our sun, but Sir E. Rutherford, before the Royal Astronomical Society, has roundly denied that the discovery materially lengthens our estimate of the sun's tenure of life and has said that if the sun were made of uranium it would not because of that last five years the longer as a giver of heat.[14] Whether we will or not, we have no choice except ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... together with the officers, numbered nine persons. This work was done at the Karlskrona naval dockyard, under the direction of Captain Palander. At the same time attention was given to the scientific equipment, principally in Stockholm, where a large number of instruments for physical, astronomical, and geological researches was obtained from the ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... month of the great eclipse. For a week Miss Ladd's boarders had talked about it, exchanging among themselves much newspaper astronomical misinformation—which the learned Miss Moore good-naturedly corrected. It was her suggestion that the household should make a night of it: "Let's all go up on the roof and see the show!" So the friendly gayety was planned—a supper in the basement ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... at the Brussels Congress to show, from the astronomical observations of the Egyptians and Assyrians, that 11,542 years before our era man existed on the earth at such a stage of civilization as to be able to take note of astronomical phenomena, and to calculate with ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... of," the magistrate said, "have vast temples constructed of huge stones placed in circles, which appear to me to have, like the great pyramids of Egypt, an astronomical signification, for I found that the stones round the sacrificial altars were so placed that the sun at its rising threw its rays upon the stone only upon the ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... their Doctrine of the World's Ages or Yugas, for instance, we are forcibly reminded of the Euphratean ideas regarding space and time. Mr. Robert Brown, junr., who is an authority in this connection, shows that the system by which the "Day of Brahma" was calculated in India resembles closely an astronomical system which obtained in Babylonia, where apparently the theory ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... nothing to instruct the Soul as to the names of those heavenly bodies. On the ceilings of some of the Theban catacombs, we not only find the constellations depicted, each with its personified image, but astronomical tables giving the aspect of the heavens fortnight by fortnight throughout the months of the Egyptian year, so that the Soul had but to lift its eyes and see in what part of the firmament its course lay night after night. Taken as a series, these tableaux form ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... sun. She winked out of existence into overdrive. She headed toward Sirene IV, in quadrature, where missile rockets floated in orbit awaiting the coming of any enemy. The distance to be traveled was roughly one and a half light-hours—some twelve astronomical units ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins |
