Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Dec 1897
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1897natur..57..127p&link_type=abstract
Nature, Volume 57, Issue 1467, pp. 127-129 (1897).
Mathematics
Logic
Scientific paper
Many objections have recently been raised-above all, in America-to the decisions of the International Conference that met in May 1896, at Paris, with the object of choosing a uniform system of fundamental stars and astronomical constants for the four great ephemerides of Berlin, London, Paris and Washington. The matter is of the greatest importance, in as much as it refers to the bases of precise astronomy, together with a general tendency of all science to a method of international discussion that, leaving free and autonomous all personal and local initiatives, bring workers in such agreement as is necessary for nullifying discrepancies and contradictions. Of such tendency we have the most comforting manifestations in the International Geodetical Association, in the Commission (also international) for unifying weights and measures, and in the similar meetings of scientific men of every nation for the electrical measurements, for meteorological services, for the photography of the heavens. Astronomy is, perhaps, among all physical sciences the one destined by its historical tradition, no less than by its present and future necessities, to second-nay, to promote and develop-the cosmopolitan tendency. The grand spectacle of the face of the heavens, ever before the eyes of all; the difference of phenomena according to the horizons, which carries with it the need of co-operation between the observers diversely situated with regard to the celestial sphere; in fine, the high and significant moral education that comes to astronomers from the continual contrast between the immensity of the heavens and the miserable narrowness of the limits traced out conventionally on the globe between one country and another; here are the causes through which a spirit superior to any narrow nationalism was soon breathed into our souls. Tycho Brahe, the proud Danish patrician, the founder of practical astronomy in the Renaissance, sings sternly- Omne solum forti patria est,coelumque Undique supra.... And his name, with those of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, form a constellation that shines not more for the sky of Denmark, than for that of Germany, Italy, or England
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