Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/76

66 For such investigations new instruments are needed, of unexampled powers and accuracy, some for angular measurements, some for mere power of seeing. Photography comes continually more and more to the front; and the idea sometimes suggests itself that by-and-by the human eye will hardly be trusted any longer for observations of precision, but will be superseded by an honest, unprejudiced, and unimaginative plate and camera. The time is not yet, however, most certainly. Indeed, it can never come at all, as relates to certain observations; since the human eye and mind together integrate, so to speak, the impressions of many separate and selected moments into one general view, while the camera can only give a brutal copy of an unselected state of things, with all its atmospheric and other imperfections.

New methods are also needed, I think (they are unquestionably possible), for freeing time-observations from the errors of personal equation; and increased precision is demanded, and is being progressively attained, in the prevention, or elimination, of instrumental errors, due to differences of temperature, to mechanical strains, and to inaccuracies of construction. Astronomers are now coming to the investigation of quantities so minute that they would be completely masked by errors of observation that formerly were usual and tolerable. The science has reached a stage where, as was indicated at the beginning of this address, it has to confront and deal with the possible unsteadiness of the earth's rotation, and the instability of its axis. The astronomer has now to reverse the old maxim of the courts: for him, and most emphatically at present, de minimis curat lex. Residuals and minute discrepancies are the seeds of future knowledge, and the very foundations of new laws.

And now, in closing this hurried and inadequate, but I fear rather tedious, review of the chief problems that are at present occupying the astronomer, what answer can we give to him who insists, Cui bono? and requires a reason for the enthusiasm that makes the votaries of our science so ardent and tireless in its pursuit? Evidently very few of the questions which have been presented have much to do directly with the material welfare of the human race. It may possibly turn out, perhaps, that the investigation of the solar radiation, and the behavior of sun-spots, may lead to some better understanding of terrestrial meteorology, and so aid agricultural operations and navigation. I do not say it will be so—in fact, I hardly expect it—but I am not sure it will not. Possibly, too, some few other astronomical investigations may facilitate the determination of latitudes and longitudes, and so help exploration and commerce; but, with a few exceptions, it must be admitted that modern astronomical investigations have not the slightest immediate commercial value.

Now, I am not one of those who despise a scientific truth or principle because it admits of an available application to the affairs of what