Abstract
Among philosophers, Venus’ lack of a moon came to attract attention when the German mathematician-philosopher Gottlob Frege in 1884 published Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. The foundation of arithmetics has nothing to do with either planets or moons, but Frege happened to use the moonless Venus to express the meaning of the number zero: “If I say ‘Venus has 0 moons,’ there simply does not exist any moon or agglomeration of moons for anything to be asserted of; ... a property is assigned to the concept ‘moon of Venus,’ namely that of including nothing under it.”1 Frege wanted to emphasize that zero is a property not of any object, but of a concept. Of course, in the present context this is merely a curiosity. There is no reason to assume that Frege had any interest in Venus’ moon as a possible astronomical body. On the other hand, it is permissible to speculate that his example reflected the contemporary discussion of the satellite of Venus.
The quotation, appearing in §46 of Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, has continued to attract philosophical interest.
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References
For Bertrand’s review, see below. Schjellerup 1882 was motivated by Schorr’s book to communicate the observation data from the Copenhagen Observatory.
William Herschel, the German-Danish astronomer Heinrich Louis d’Arrest (1822–1875) and a few other astronomers had searched in vain for a moon around Mars. According to d’Arrest, there was little hope of seeing a Mars satellite, should it exist (d’Arrest 1865). On the discovery, see Gingerich 1970 and Dick 1988. Earlier in the century four more moons were discovered: the moon around Neptune (William Lassell, 1846), one more Saturn moon (George P. Bond, 1848) and two more Uranus moons (William Lassell, 1851). On Hall’s discovery and its reception, see also Hall 1878 and Nature 16 (1877), pp. 397–398, 427–428.
Bertrand 1882, p. 203. Similarly in Bertrand 1875, p. 458.
Bertrand 1875.
Flammarion 1880, pp. 463–464.
Ibid., p. 464. As mentioned above, the asteroid hypothesis had previously been suggested by von Ende and Haase. On Flammarion as a pluralist, see Crowe 1999, pp. 378–386, 410–433.
Flammarion 1884, pp. 262–266.
Denning 1882, p. 111. Denning (1848–1931) was a prominent amateur astronomer who discovered four comets. Obituary notice in The Observatory 54 (1931), 276–283.
Houzeau, who served as director of the Royal Observatory in Brussels 1876–83 and for a period was president of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences, was active in the Venus transit observations in 1882. His interest in the Venus moon is illustrated by his massive astronomical bibliography, which included the subject of the moon of Venus as a separate entry (Houzeau and Lancaster 1964, vol. 2, columns 1136–1137). His eventful life, which included political activity and extended stays abroad, is described in Verhas 2002.
Houzeau 1878, pp. 957–958.
Houzeau 1884, based on an article in Ciel et Terre of the same year, with excerpts translated in Anon. 1884.
Houzeau 1884, p. 285.
Anon. 1884, p. 226. A more elaborate rejection of planet Neith appeared in Stroobant 1887a, pp. 15–18.
Young 1886, p. 249. See also Lynn 1887a, p. 74.
Thirion 1885. A frequent contributor to the Catholic journal Revue des Questions Scientifiques, Thirion (1852–1918) published on a variety of astronomical and physical topics, including the history and philosophy of science.
Hevelius 1674. Aristotle referred to the phenomenon in his Meteorologica. For a modern example of a mock sun, looking like a satellite accompanying the Sun, see Sky and Telescope 110, no. 7 (2005), p. 128. For a history of mock suns until the mid-eighteenth century, see Priestley 1772, pp. 613–630. There is no modern history of the subject.
Thirion 1885; Bravais 1847. For criticism of Thirion’s hypothesis, see Stroobant 1887a, p. 15.
A brief account of the observations of Stuyvaert and Niesten is given in Thirion 1885, p. 46 and Stroobant 1887a, pp. 8–9. Stuyvaert and Niesten believed that they had seen rapid displacements, relative to Venus’ terminator, of both bright and dark spots, and for this reason they supported the short rotation period of 23 hours rather than the long one proposed by Schiaparelli. See Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 52 (1892), 281–282.
According to The Amateur Astronomer 18, no. 1 (1958), 3–6.
On Wilson (1851–1908) and his astronomical work, see the obituary in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A 83 (1910), iii–vii, and also Warner 1977.
Prince 1882, p. 65.
Prince 1883, reviewed in The Observatory 6 (1883), 160. As pointed out in section 3.1, this was a reproduction of John Bevis’ translation originally appearing in the Mathematical Magazine in 1761.
Lynn 1884, p. 231.
Zenger 1877, p. 461. See also Baum 1999.
Mentioned in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 50 (1890), 253.
Remarkably, at the time Stroobant presented his work to the Royal Belgian Academy, he was only 19 years old. Two years later he earned a doctorate in physics and mathematics from the University of Brussels and then embarked on a distinguished career in astronomy which made him a professor of astronomy (1896) and director of the Royal Observatory (1925). Obituary notices in The Observatory 59 (1936), 349–352 and Astronomische Nachrichten 260 (1936), columns 175–176.
Stroobant 1887a. In addition to this work, which included many excerpts from the historical sources, he published shorter versions, such as Stroobant 1887b, Stroobant 1887c and Stroobant 1888.
Stroobant 1887b, p. 457.
Anon. 1887a, in which exception was taken to one case, the observations made by Roedkiær in March 1764. A similar appreciation appeared in Anon. 1887b.
Klein 1887, p. 249. Again, in a review by “R. R.” in Bulletin Astronomique 4 (1887), 473–475: “Mr. Stroobant has succeeded to dissipate the mystery which envelopes this enigmatic satellite of Venus, and to destroy a legend that menaced to perpetuate itself” (p. 475). See also Wilson 1887. For a similar evaluation, of a somewhat later date, see Macpherson 1906, p. 88.
Young 1893, p. 331. The possibility was also mentioned in Russell, Dugan and Stewart 1926, p. 320, apparently taken over from Young (it was a revision of Young’s textbook Manual of Astronomy, first published 1902).
E.g., Wolf 1891, vol. 1, p. 537.
Faure and Graffigny 1888, which includes a preface by Flammarion. We have used the online edition http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2462, where the quotation appears on p. 65.
On the second moon of the Earth, see Ashbrook 1955 and Bakich 2000, pp. 145–149. See also Schlyter 2003 and the identical version in http://www.nineplanets.org/hypo.html. The present account relies on Kragh 2008.
Greene 1954, pp. 348–349; Burke 1986, p. 23.
Farley 1811, p. 286.
Petit 1847, p. 261. For the earlier paper, see Petit 1846.
Leverrier 1851, p. 566.
Arago 1854–60, vol. 4, p. 281.
Guillemin 1866, pp. 192–193.
On Verne and astronomy, see Jacques Crovisier, “L’Astronomie de Jules Verne,” a paper delivered to the Colloque international Jules Verne: Les Machine et la science, held in Nantes in October 2005. Online as http://www.lesia.obspm.fr/~crovisier/JV/cro05_nantes.htm.
Quoted from the 1873 edition of Round the Moon, available online as http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/sherwood/R-II-d.htm.
Waltemath 1898, a privately published pamphlet.
Cassini and Maraldi 1707.
Science8 (12 August 1898), p. 185, section on “Scientific notes and news.”
Quoted in Gingerich 1978, p. 130.
Pickering and Pickering 1890, p. 83. Further details on the search for a lunar satellite are given in Baum 1973, pp. 19–47.
Pickering and Pickering 1890, p. 83.
“Studying the eclipse; how the Harvard observers viewed the Moon,” New York Times, 22 November 1891, pp. 17–18. It is not obvious why Edward Pickering (1846–1919) took a stand on the question of a satellite of the Moon. As far as we know, no one had suggested the existence of such a body.
Barnard 1895, p. 347. See also Baum 1973, pp. 33–34 and Sheehan 1995, p. 288.
On Pickering’s claims of undiscovered planets, see Hoyt 1976.
Pickering 1923.
Although he may have discussed the subject informally, William Pickering (1858–1938) never claimed to have predicted or discovered a second moon of the Earth. Spill’s observation report appeared in Kritzinger 1926.
Barnard 1892. The name Amalthea was suggested by Flammarion in correspondence with Barnard.
Barnard 1906. Rudolph Pirovano, an Austrian astronomer, thought to have found an inconsistency in the data given by Barnard. The American astronomer replied by providing further details of his observation of 1892, assuring that his data were correct. See the discussion in Astronomische Nachrichten 172 (1906), columns 207–208 and 173 (1907), columns 315–318.
Gore 1909, p. 30. On Barnard’s observation, see also Sheehan 1995, pp. 200–202 and Baum 1973, pp. 87–91.
See 1909, column 345. On See (1886–1962) and his dubious reputation, see Sheehan 2002.
Meeus 1963, pp. 38–39. If Rigollet reported his astrographic observation, we have not found the report.
Moore 1956, p. 96; Hunt and Moore 1982.
Burbidge 1958, p. 168.
UFO Roundup, 5 October 2000 (http://www.ufoinfo.com/roundup/v05/rnd05_40.shtml). See also Moore 1956, p. 96, and Corliss 1979, pp. 137–139. Several observations of unidentified shining objects near Venus are reported in http://www.xdream.freeserve.co.uk/UFOBase/Astronomers.htm.
Shklovskii and Sagan 1966, p. 373–374. The book was a revised translation of a Russian work of 1962, with Shklovskii (1916–85) as the sole author. Later in life, he abandoned his belief in extraterrestrials and turned towards anti-pluralism.
See Burns 1973 and Ward and Reid 1973. Other astronomers have suggested the possibility that Mercury might once have been a satellite of Venus, but that tidal interactions caused Mercury to escape into a solar orbit. This line of research started with Van Flandern and Harrington 1976.
Alemi and Stevenson 2006. See also Scientific American, online edition, 10 October 2006.
C. W. Leadbeater, The Inner Life: Theosophical Talks at Adyar (Chicago: Rajput Press, 1911), here quoted from the online edition http://www.anandgholap.net/Inner_Life_Vol_II-CWL.htm.
Fort 1999, p. 184, here from a hypertext edition (http://www.resologist.net/damn14.htm). On Fort and Forteanism, see Gardner 1957, pp. 42–54. Constance 1956 is another book in the strange-object tradition of Hoyt and Corliss. It deals with the Venus satellite on pp. 45–46.
For an example of social constructivists’ implicit defense of discarded entities, in this case the notorious N-rays, see Ashmore 1993. And for critical comments, Kragh 1998.
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(2008). Closure: the discussion of the 1880s. In: The Moon that Wasn’t. Science Networks. Historical Studies, vol 37. Birkhäuser Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7643-8909-3_6
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