Transitions

McCormmach, Russell

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-2022-0_4

Russell McCormmach²

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Abstract

Two years after his paper on earthquakes, in 1762 Michell was appointed professor of geology in the University. For this position, he had able competition in the astronomer Nevil Maskelyne, who subsequently was appointed astronomer royal over Michell, but as a geologist Michell clearly was the better qualified of the two. He was thirty-eight at the time of his appointment, and he had been a fellow of Queens’ for the past thirteen years.

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Notes

1.
Winstanley, Unreformed Cambridge, 167–68. Historical Register of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1910), 90–91.
2.
Cambridge Chronicle, 8 September 1764; quoted in Cole Diary, 186.
3.
Ibid. Winstanley, Unreformed Cambridge, 168–69. Gunther, Early Science in Cambridge, 439. Porter, Making of Geology, 95.
4.
David Price, “John Woodward and a Surviving British Geological Collection from the Early Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Collections 1 (1989): 79–95, on 79. Eyles, “Woodward,” 502.
5.
Price, “Woodward,” 80, 84–85. Eyles, “Woodward,” 502.
6.
Long, quoted in Gascoigne, Cambridge, 110.
7.
History of Cambridgeshire, 221. Winstanley, Unreformed Cambridge, 59–63, 73, 78, 89. Newcastle Papers, British Library, Add Mss 32954, vol. 269, f. 288; Add Mss 32957, vol. 272, f. 153.
8.
Thomas Birch to Philip Yorke, Lord Royston, 17 July 1762, British Library, Add Mss 35399, ff. 298–301.
9.
Howse, Maskelyne, 53–59.
10.
Alexander Small to Benjamin Franklin, 1 December 1764, Papers of Benjamin Franklin 11:479–83.
11.
Sime, Herschel, 95.
12.
Agnes N. Clarke, A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh, 1887), 35.
13.
R.V. Wallis and P.J. Wallis, Bibliography of British Mathematics and Its Applications. Part 2, 1701–1760 (Newcastle upon Tyne: PHIBB), viii, 482.
14.
Richard Sorrenson, “Towards a History of the Royal Society in the Eighteenth Century,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 50 (1996): 29–46, on 36.
15.
This cross-section of the membership agrees with Sorrenson’s study of the membership between 1735 and 1780; based on a sampling every five years from certificates recommending candidates for admission, he finds that during these forty-five years clerics accounted for 12% of new members, or 13% if bishops are included; it comes to two clerics a year on the average. Ibid.
16.
Information about the members comes largely from their entries in Alumni Cantabrigienses, Alumni Oxonienses, and Dictionary of National Biography.
17.
One of the three was a Scottish Presbyterian; the other two were Dissenting ministers; there were no Catholics.
18.
Thirty-three of them had the D.D., three a law degree, and one a medical degree.
19.
Sorrenson, “Towards a History of the Royal Society in the Eighteenth Century,” 34.
20.
John Michell to Sir George Savile, 10 August 1782, NA, DD/SR 221/93.
21.
John Michell to Sir George Savile, 27 January 1783, NA, DD/FJ 11/1/7/112/1.
22.
Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century, 53–56.
23.
Conclusion Book, Queens’ College Archive.
24.
Bishop’s Act Book, Hampshire Record Office, 21M65/A2/2.
25.
“Thomas, John,” DNB 19:663–64. The Victoria History of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, vol. 2, ed. H. A. Doubleday and W. Page, reprinted for the University of London Institute of Historical Research (Folkestone and London: Dawson’s of Pall Mall, 1973), 99.
26.
Marriage Certificate, Rolleston Parish Church Marriage Register.
27.
She was baptized on 11 October 1727. Rolleston Parish Church Baptism Register.
28.
Will of Luke Williamson, 1 January 1702/03, Newark Archdeaconry; will of Luke Williamson, 2 April 1750, Newark Deanery. Cambridge Chronicle, 8 September 1764; quoted in Geikie, Michell, 12.
29.
Austin Whitaker, Compton and Shawford (np: Barbara Large and Austin Whitaker, 1985), 12. Victoria History of Hampshire 3:406–8, and 5:447.
30.
Victoria History of Hampshire 3: 407.
31.
Not long after Michell left, the bishop paid the parish an official visit. “Compton,” Parson and Parish in Eighteenth-Century Hampshire: Replies to Bishops’ Visitations, ed. W. R. Ward (Winchester: Hampshire County Council, 1995), 175.
32.
Humphrey Quill, John Harrison: The Man Who Found Longitude (London: John Baker, 1966), 121–25.
33.
Small to Franklin, 1 December 1764.
34.
“At a Meeting of the Commissioners … on the 30th of May 1765,” Board of Longitude, Public Record Office, R.G.O. 5: 46–48.“Minutes Made at a Board of Longitude Held at y^e Admiralty Sept 12th 1765,” S. Pepy’s Papers 1686–1695 [and] L. Kendall’s Chronometer 1765–1796, British Library, Add Mss 39,822, f. 35. A new parliamentary act was passed; eventually Harrison gave in.
35.
“By the Commission Appointed,”13 January 1770,” S. Pepy’s Papers 1686–1695 [and] L. Kendall’s Chronometer 1765–1796, ff. 44–45. In 1772 Captain James Cook sailed for Tahiti with a Harrison timekeeper made by Kendall. Hardin, “Michell,” 35. Taylor, Mathematical Practitioners, 209.
36.
S. Pepy’s Papers 1686–1695 [and] L. Kendall’s Chronometer 1765–1796, f. 35.
37.
Rolleston Parish Church Burial Register.
38.
John Michell, “Proposal of a Method for Measuring Degrees of Longitude upon Parallels of the Aequator,” PT 56 (1766): 119–25, on 119, 124.
39.
Michell, “Earthquakes,” 598.
40.
Michell, “Degrees of Longitude,”125.
41.
Michell, “Observations on the Same Comet.”
42.
John Michell, “A Recommendation of Hadley’s Quadrant for Surveying, Especially the Surveying of Harbours, Together with a Particular Application of It in Some Cases of Pilotage,” PT 55 (1765): 70–78, on 70–71.
43.
G. De Boer, A History of the Spurn Lighthouses (n. p.: East Yorkshire Local History Society, 1968), 44, 47, 49, 53. Parry, “John Michell’s Theory of Matter,” 17–19. Crossley, “Mystery at the Rectory,” 68. A.W. Skempton, “Appendix III,” John Smeaton, 254–58, on 257. John Smeaton, “Appendix; Containing an Account of the Establishment of the Present Lights upon the Spurn Point … ,” In A Narrative of the Building and a Description of the Construction of the Edystone Lighthouse with Stone: To Which Is Subjoined, An Appendix, Giving Some Account of the Lighthouse on the Spurn Point, Built upon a Sand, 2nd ed. (London, 1793), 185–98.
44.
Michell, “Hadley’s Quadrant,” 74–75.
45.
Bishop’s Act Book, Hampshire Record Office, 21M65/A2/2. Memorandum Book, ibid., 1M76/P11. Parson and Parish, 190.
46.
Heilbron, Electricity, 153.
47.
John Michell to Sir George Savile, 30 July 1766, NA, DD/SR, 219/3.
48.
Dark stars such as Algol’s companion do reflect light, but this was not known in the eighteenth century. Algol comes up in Michell’s work, discussed later in this book.
49.
Michael Hoskin, Stellar Astronomy: Historical Studies (Chalfont, St. Giles: Science History Publications, 1982), 7, 29–31.
50.
Edmond Halley, “Some Remarks on a Late Essay of Mr. Cassini, Wherein He Proposes to Find, by Observation, the Parallax and Magnitude of Sirius,” PT 31 (1719): 1–4.
51.
James Bradley, “An Account of a New-Discovered Motion of the Fixed Stars,” PT 35 (1727–28): 637–61. The parallax of γ Draconis is 0".017, and only twenty-one stars have a parallax greater than 1/4". A.F. O’D Alexander, “Bradley, James,” DSB 2:387–89, on 388. Hoskin, Stellar Astronomy, 5, 8, 31–35.
52.
Hoskin, Stellar Astronomy, 10–11. J.D. North, “Henderson, Thomas,” DSB 6:263–64. James B. Kayler, Extreme Stars at the Edge of Creation (Cambridge, New York, Oakleigh: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 15.
53.
Hélenè Vignolles, “La Distance des Etoiles au dix-huitième Siècle: L’Echelle des Magnitudes de John Michell,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 55 (2000): 77–101, on 80.
54.
Ibid., 81–82.
55.
Newton, Principia 2: 596–97.
56.
Long, Astronomy, 1:325–26.
57.
Ibid. J.P.L. de Chéseaux, Traité de la comète qui a paru en 1743 et 1744 (Lausanne and Geneva, 1744), 223–29. Lambert, Photometria, 504–11. David Speiser, “The Distance of the Fixed Stars and the Riddle of the Sun’s Radiation,” in Mélanges Alexandre Koyré. L’aventure de la science, ed. R. Taton and I. B. Cohen, 2 vols. (Paris: Hermann, 1964), 1:541–51. Hoskin, Stellar Astronomy, 6, 17. I thank Michael Hoskin for calling my attention to Lambert’s and Chéseax’s estimates and for informing me about their work.
58.
William Whiston, Astronomical Lectures, Read in the Publick Schools at Cambridge (London, 1715), 39. Halley’s reasoning went as follows. Thirteen equal spheres can touch one another and also a sphere of the same size at their center, and thirteen is approximately the number of stars of the first magnitude. Fifty-two spheres can touch the spheres of the first order, and fifty-two is approximately the number of stars of the second magnitude. The departures of the number of observed stars of the various magnitudes from the geometrical counts Halley attributed to possible inequalities in the separation of the stars or in their sizes. David Gregory, Elements of Astronomy, 2 vols. (London, 1713), 1:289–90. Edmond Halley, “Of the Number, Order, and Light of the Fixed Stars,” PT 31 (1720): 24–26. For conflicting opinions on the relationship between the distance and the brightness of stars, see Russell McCormmach, “John Michell and Henry Cavendish: Weighing the Stars,” British Journal for the History of Science 4 (1968), 126–55, on 132–33, n. 20.
59.
W.E. Knowles Middleton, “Bouguer, Pierre,” DSB 2:343–44.
60.
Wolf, History of Science, 1:167–68.
61.
Newton, Opticks, 99.
62.
Halley, “Some Remarks on a Late Essay of Mr. Cassini.” Robert Grant, History of Physical Astronomy, from the Earliest Ages to the Middle of the 19th Century … (London, 1852), 545.
63.
John Michell, “An Inquiry into the Probable Parallax, and Magnitude of the Fixed Stars, from the Quantity of Light Which They Afford Us, and the Particular Circumstances of Their Situation,” PT 57 (1767): 234–64, on 240.
64.
Edmond Halley, “Of the Infinity of the Sphere of Fix’d Stars,” PT 31 (1720): 22–24. For opinions on the infinity, definiteness, or finiteness of the universe, see McCormmach, “Michell,” 135, n. 45.
65.
Newton, Principia 2: 422, 544.
66.
Benjamin Worster, A Compendious and Methodical Account of the Principles of Natural Philosophy, 2nd ed. (London, 1730), 28. Roger Joseph Boscovich, A Theory of Natural Philosophy, trans. from the 1763 Latin edition by J.M. Child (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966), 146.
67.
Whiston, Astronomical Lectures, 41–42.
68.
Thomas Wright, An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe, Founded upon the Laws of Nature … (London, 1750), iii–iv, 56–57.
69.
Scriba, “Lambert,” 598.
70.
Edmond Halley, “An Account of Several Nebulae or Lucid Spots Like Clouds, Lately Discovered Among the Fixt Stars by Help of the Telescope,” PT 29 (1715): 390–92.
71.
Samuel Dunn, “An Attempt to Assign the Cause, Why the Sun and Moon Appear to the Naked Eye Larger When They Are Near the Horizon. Within an Account of Several Natural Phaenomena, Relative to This Subject,” PT 52 (1762): 462–73.
72.
William Derham, “Observations of the Appearances among the Fix’d Stars, Called Nebulous Stars,” PT 38 (1733): 70–74.
73.
Cassini believed this, for example. Long, Astronomy 1: 352.
74.
Thomas Wright thought so.
75.
Newton, Opticks, 343, 399. For a variety of answers to these questions, see McCormmach, “Michell,” 133–35.
76.
Newton, Principia 2: 574.
77.
Keill, Astronomy, iii.
78.
Alexis Claude Clairaut, “A Translation and Explanation of Some Articles of the Book Intitled Théorie de la Figure de la Terre … ,” PT 48 (1753): 73–85, on 82–83. Leonhard Euler, “Extract of a Letter from Professor Euler of Berlin, to the Rev. Mr. Caspar Wetstein … ,” PT 47 (1751): 263–64.
79.
Sir H. Spencer-Jones, “Astronomy through the Eighteenth Century,” in Natural Philosophy Through the 18th Century, and Allied Topics, ed. A. Ferguson (London: Taylor & Francis, 1948); appended to Philosophical Magazine, ser. 7, 39 (1948): 10–27, on 20. A. Pannekoek, “Refined Theory,” A History of Astronomy (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1961), 297–307.
80.
Spencer-Jones, “Astronomy,” 12.
81.
Spencer-Jones, “Astronomy,” 13. Pannekoek, “Refined Practice,” History of Astronomy, 289–96. Wolf, History of Science 1:121–45.
82.
Michell to Cavendish, 2 July 1783.
83.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 234, 237.
84.
We can see this from a few comparisons based on our current knowledge of the stars. Stars of the so-called main sequence vary in mass from a few percent of the Sun’s mass to 100 times the Sun’s mass. In brightness, they range from stars so faint that for us to see them they would have to be as close as one of our planets, to stars so bright that if they were as close as the nearest stars we could read by them at night. In size, they range from collapsed stars a few miles in diameter to gaseous super-giants large enough to contain billions of Suns. The Sun lies between the extreme cases. Kayler, Extreme Stars, Prologue.
85.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 237–38.
86.
Ibid., 238–39.
87.
Bouguer, Optical Treatise, 43.
88.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 238.
89.
Ibid., 235–36.
90.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 239.
91.
Struve, Astronomy, 10.
92.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 252–53.
93.
Ibid., 240.
94.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 240–41.With an interferometer, the star Betelgeuse was found to be 700 times the size of the Sun, yet it subtends an angle of only 0.055", an order of magnitude larger than Michell’s estimate, but still too small to be detected by instruments of the eighteenth century. In any case, Betelgeus is not a Sun-like star but a red super-giant.
95.
Vignolles, “Distance,” 85–86. Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 242.
96.
Hoskin, Herschel, 34.
97.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 241.
98.
“Statistics,” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed. (Springfield: Merriam-Webster, 1993), 1149.
99.
William G. Rothstein, Public Health and the Risk Factor: A History of an Uneven Medical Revolution (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2003), 9–17.
100.
A. Hald, A History of Mathematical Statistics from 1750 to 1930 (New York: Wiley, 1998), 11–13.
101.
Ibid., 10, 13. Lorraine Daston, Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 6, 13–14, 48, 54.
102.
Newton, Opticks, 402; quoted in part in Barry Gower, “Astronomy and Probability: Forbes Versus Michell on the Distribution of the Stars,” Annals of Science 39 (1982): 145–60, on 158.
103.
Abraham De Moivre, The Doctrine of Chances, 2nd ed. (London, 1738), v; quoted in Gower, “Astronomy and Probability,” 145–46.
104.
Gower, “Astronomy and Probability,” 159–60. Sheynin, “Statistical Reasoning,” 191–92.
105.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 243.
106.
Thomas Bayes, “An Essay towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances,” PT 53 (1764): 370–418, on 372–74. Ian Hacking, “Moivre, Abraham de,” DSB 9:452–55, on 453. Ian Hacking, “Bayes, Thomas,” ibid. 1:531–32. Bayes’s theorem states that if the relative frequency of an outcome is m:n upon n independent occasions, the most probable value of the probability of an outcome is m:n, provided that any value of this probability initially is as likely as any other. The “Achilles heel” of the theorem is its assumption of initial probabilities, which gave rise to a nineteenth-century debate in which Michell’s use of probability was reconsidered; see below. Gower, “Astronomy and Probability,” 146, 149. “Probability,” Encyclopaedia Britannica 18:529–32, on 531–32.
107.
Thomas Simpson, “A Letter … on the Advantage of Taking the Mean of a Number of Observations, in Practical Astronomy,” PT 49 (1755): 82–93.
108.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 237.
109.
Ibid., 243–44.
110.
Ibid., 343–45. David W. Hughes and Susan Cartwright, “John Michell, the Pleiades, and Odds of 496,000 to 1,” Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 10(2) (2007): 93–99, on 94–95. Hald, Mathematical Statistics, 70–71.
111.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 246. Hughes and Cartwright, “John Michell,” 95.
112.
Hughes and Cartwright, “John Michell,” 95.
113.
Kayler, Extreme Stars, 28.
114.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 243–49, 251. Hughes and Cartwright, “John Michell,” 96. Oscar Sheynin, “The Introduction of Statistical Reasoning into Astronomy: From Newton to Poincaré,” in The General History of Astronomy. Vol. 2. Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics. Part B: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. R. Taton and C. Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 191–97, on 194–95.
115.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 249. Hughes and Cartwright, “John Michell,” 96–97. Hald, Mathematical Statistics, 72–73. Gower, “Astronomy and Probability,” 48.
116.
Hughes and Cartwright, “John Michell,” 98.
117.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 252–55.
118.
Ibid., 257–59.
119.
Simon F. Portegies Zwart, “The Long-Lost Siblings of the Sun,” Scientific American 301 (November 2009): 41–47.
120.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 242. Michell to Cavendish, 2 July 1783.
121.
Michell to Cavendish, 2 July 1783. Henry Cavendish to John Michell, 12 August 1783, draft, Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth.
122.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 261.
123.
Herschel, “On the Construction of the Heavens.” Hoskin, Stellar Astronomy, 15–16, 67.
124.
Blagden to Michell, 25 April 1785. Michell to Blagden, 17 July 1785, American Philosophical Society Library, Misc. MSS Collection.
125.
Michell, “Probable Parallax,” 261.
126.
Hoskin, Stellar Astronomy, 139. Spencer-Jones, “Astronomy,” 24.
127.
William Watson to William Herschel, 16 March 1783, Royal Astronomical Society, Herschel MSS, W 1/13, W.24.
128.
Herschel, “On the Construction of the Heavens,” 253.
129.
William Herschel, “On the Proper Motion of the Sun and Solar System; with an Account of Several Changes That Have Happened Among the Fixed Stars Since the Time of Mr. Flamsteed,” PT 73 (1783): 247–83; in William Herschel, The Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel … , 2 vols., ed. J. L. E. Dreyer (London: Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society, 1912) 1:108–30, on 126.
130.
William Herschel, “On the Parallax of the Fixed Stars,” PT 72 (1782): 82–111; in Herschel, Scientific Papers 1:39–57, on 51.
131.
Herschel’s remedy was to introduce more classes and adopt a uniform method of assigning stars to them. He said that the distance of the brightest stars should be taken as unity, and that the distances of the other stars should be assigned according to their comparative brightness. William Herschel to Nevil Maskelyne, 28 April 1782, copy, Herschel MSS, Royal Astronomical Society, W 1/1, 39–48.
132.
Nevil Maskelyne to William Herschel, 19 April 1782, Herschel MSS, Royal Astronomical Society, W 1/13, M.18.
133.
Herschel to Maskelyne, 28 April 1782.
134.
Herschel, “Parallax of the Fixed Stars.”
135.
William Herschel, “Catalogue of a Second Thousand of New Nebulae and Clusters of Stars; with a Few Introductory Remarks on the Construction of the Heavens,” PT 79 (1789): 212–55; in Herschel, Scientific Papers 1:329–69, on 331.
136.
Hoskin, Herschel, 33–39; Stellar Astronomy, 15. Michael A. Hoskin, “William Herschel and Sidereal Astronomy,” Endeavor 23 (1964): 18–21, on 19–20.
137.
Forbes, “Astronomy and Probability,” 149–50, 160. J.W. Forbes, “On the Alleged Evidence for a Physical Connexion Between Stars Forming Binary or Multiple Groups Arising from Their Proximity Alone,” Philosophical Magazine 35 (1849): 132–33. Daston, Classical Probability, 10–11.
138.
Forbes, “Astronomy and Probability,” 146, 158, 160.
139.
Hoskin, Herschel, 17.
140.
Charles Blagden to John Michell, 25 April 1785, draft, Blagden Letterbook, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Osborn Shelves fc15; hereafter cited as Yale. William Herschel, “On the Construction of the Heavens,” PT 75 (1785): 213–66; in Herschel, Scientific Papers 1:223–59; the discussion “Nebulae or Milky-Ways” begins on 254.

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McCormmach, R. (2012). Transitions. In: Weighing the World. Archimedes, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2022-0_4

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