Abstract
In 1734 William Whiston published Six Dissertations dealing with biblical history and astronomical chronology. Tucked away in a long discussion of the calculation of ancient eclipses, Whiston referred to Halley’s discovery of the moon’s secular acceleration, remarking that “This I have all along esteemed one of Dr. Halley’s greatest Discoveries in Astronomy”, and provided an estimate of the correction to be applied to the calculation of the time of syzygy on account of the moon’s secular acceleration, the first correction for the secular acceleration to appear in print. Whiston’s discussion of the secular acceleration was presented within an ongoing acrimonious dispute between Whiston and Arthur Ashley Sykes, a Cambridge educated clergyman and prolific writer of controversial religious pamphlets, over whether the eclipse reported by Phlegon should be associated with the darkness during Christ’s crucifixion, and appears to have passed other astronomers by without making any impression. As we will see, only one other scholar, George Costard made any reference to Whiston’s discussion of the secular acceleration, which quickly became a forgotten episode in the history of its study, missing from all later (and contemporary) accounts of the subject.
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Notes
- 1.
Whiston, Six Dissertations, p. 157.
- 2.
Detailed biographies of Whiston may be found in Farrell (1981) and Force (1985), pp. 10–31. Both these works make extensive, and generally uncritical, use of Whiston’s autobiographical Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston Containing Memoirs of Several of his Friends Also, published in 1749, 3 years before his death. Buchwald and Feingold (forthcoming), Chap. 8, provides a more reasoned account based upon a wider variety of source material.
- 3.
Rousseau (1987).
- 4.
This work was probably not written by one of the original Scriblerians (Pope, Swift, Gay, Arbuthnot, and Parnell); the “Scriblerus” appellation seems to have been adopted by many satirical writers of the eighteenth century. See Marshall (2008).
- 5.
Biographical information on Sykes may be found in Disney, Memoirs of the life and writings of Arthus Ashley Sykes, on which the following account is based.
- 6.
On the early history of the Boyle lectures, see Dahm (1970).
- 7.
Clarke’s lectures were published with the title A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation in 1706 and then republished together with his 1704 lectures under the title A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, which was reprinted at least ten times during the eighteenth century. On Clarke’s lectures, see Dahm (1970) and Gascoigne (1989), pp. 117–126.
- 8.
Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, p. 325.
- 9.
Grafton (1993), p. 559.
- 10.
Kepler, Eclogæ Chronicæ, pp. 87, 126.
- 11.
Kepler, Eclogæ Chronicæ, p. 87. Kepler’s dating of the eclipse formed the basis of almost all further work on this eclipse until today. For recent studies of this eclipse, see Fotheringham (1920), Newton (1970), pp. 110–113, Stephenson (1997), pp. 359–360, and Smith (2008).
- 12.
Whiston, Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Samuel Clarke, p. 4.
- 13.
Whiston, Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Samuel Clarke, p. 148.
- 14.
Whiston computed the circumstances of the eclipses using his “Copernicus”, a mechanical instrument he had devised for calculating astronomical phenomena. The Copernicus instruments were made by John Senex and sold both by Senex and by Whiston himself at the price of six guineas. Whiston presented the instrument at a meeting of the Royal Society on 10 February 1715/6. According to Farrell (1981), p. 216 no examples of Whiston’s “Copernicus” have been identified. Whiston also wrote The Copernicus Explained (1715), describing the instrument and its use.
- 15.
Sykes, Dissertation on the Eclipse Mentioned by Phlegon, p. 4.
- 16.
Sykes, Dissertation on the Eclipse Mentioned by Phlegon, pp. 75–76.
- 17.
Whiston, The Testimony of Phlegon Vindicated, pp. 49–50.
- 18.
Sykes, A Defence of the Dissertation on the Eclipse Mentioned by Phlegon, pp. 1–3.
- 19.
Sykes, A Defence of the Dissertation on the Eclipse Mentioned by Phlegon, p. 3.
- 20.
Sykes, A Defence of the Dissertation on the Eclipse Mentioned by Phlegon, p. 4.
- 21.
Whiston, Six Dissertations, p. 134. BL MS Add 4224 ff. 218–222 preserves an account of the dispute over the eclipse of Phlegon written by Birch, based in part upon information provided directly by Sykes. F. 220 identifies G. M. as Gael Morris, assistant at the Greenwich Observatory.
- 22.
Sykes, A Defence of the Dissertation on the Eclipse Mentioned by Phlegon, p. 4.
- 23.
Sykes, A Defence of the Dissertation on the Eclipse Mentioned by Phlegon, p. 63.
- 24.
Sykes, A Defence of the Dissertation on the Eclipse Mentioned by Phlegon, p. 4.
- 25.
Farrell (1981), pp. 116–178.
- 26.
Farrell (1981), p. 36.
- 27.
Whiston, Six Dissertations, p. 133.
- 28.
Whiston, Copernicus Explained, p. 43.
- 29.
Whiston’s astronomical lectures were published in Latin as Praelectiones Astronomicae Cantabrigaiae in Scholis Publicis Habitae (1707) and in English as Astronomical Lectures Read in the Public Schools at Cambridge in 1715. They include a collection of astronomical tables taken from Flamsteed (corrected), Halley, Cassini, and Streete.
- 30.
Letter from Flamsteed to Sharp dated 1 July 1707; edition by Forbes, Murdin, and Willmoth (2002), p. 428.
- 31.
Whiston, Six Dissertations, p. 157.
- 32.
Whiston, Six Dissertations, pp. 158–159.
- 33.
Whiston, Memoirs, p. 293.
- 34.
See Whiston’s comments on a conversation with Halley in his Memoirs, p. 243.
- 35.
MS RGO 2/16 unnumbered folio.
- 36.
A copy of Whiston’s Six Dissertations is listed in the sale catalogue of Halley’s books; see Feisenberger (1975).
- 37.
The Scriblerians in their ridiculing of Whiston quote a contemporary of Whiston at Cambridge: “I remember Whiston well enough at Cambridge; we esteem’d him a Man of pretty good Learning, especially in Mathematics: and he held a Correspondence with many of our B—ps, who, I wonder, did not prefer him; the Disappointment of which I take to be the Cause of these his Proceedings: for he was always esteem’d very ambitious, and self-opinionated, of a hot Head and warm Imagination”. (Scriblerius, Whistoneutes, p. 3). See also Buchwald and Feingold (forthcoming), Chap. 8. They quote a statement from Whiston’s enemy Anthony Collins that Whison’s temper “disposes him to receive any sudden thoughts, any thing that strikes his imagination, when favourable to his preconceiv’d scheme of things … his imagination is so strong and lively on these occasions that he sometimes even supposes facts, and builds upon these facts”.
- 38.
Sykes’s Second Defence prompted a reply from John Chapman, Phlegon Re-examined, which again does not discuss the astronomical data.
- 39.
Lalande, “Mémoire sur les Équations Séculaires”, pp. 426–472.
- 40.
Long, Astronomy pp. 433–434.
- 41.
Delambre (1827), pp. 597–598.
- 42.
Grant (1852), p. 60.
- 43.
Costard, “Concerning the Year of the Eclipse foretold by Thales”, pp. 24–25.
- 44.
BL MS Add 4224, f. 220. The account spans ff. 218–222 and includes a fragment of Sykes’ original draft for the end of his Second Defence concerning the letter of the year of the eclipse that Sykes decided to omit from the published version.
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Steele, J.M. (2012). A Forgotten Episode in the History of the Secular Acceleration: William Whiston, Arthur Ashley Sykes and the Eclipse of Phlegon. In: Ancient Astronomical Observations and the Study of the Moon’s Motion (1691-1757). Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2149-8_3
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