VMs: Re: Kircher's Moon

[JJJRLandau@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 4/11/03 7:53:20 AM Eastern Daylight Time, drjones@xxxxxxx 
writes:

> > I seem to remember reading somewhere that Kant also had an "a priori"
>  proof
>  that there could only be seven planets - does anyone know if that is
>  true?
>  
>  I think you are confusing Kant with Kepler.  

Eric Temple Bell _Men of Mathematics_ New York: Simon and Schuster, 1937, 
quoting from page 239 of the 1965 paperback edition, which is reprinted in 
volume I page 314 of James R. Newman, ed _The World of Mathematics_

"the discovery of Ceres coincided with the publication by the famous 
philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) of a sarcastic attack 
on astronomers for presuming to search for an eighth planet.  Would they but 
pay some attention to philosophy, Hegel asserted, they must see immediately 
that there can be precisely seven planets, no more, no less.  Thier search 
therefore was aa stupid waste of time.  Doubtless this slight lapse on 
Hegel's part has been satisfactorily explained by his disciples, but they 
have not yet talked away the hundreds of minor planets which mock his Jovian 
ban."

Kepler at one time tried out a theory that there were exactly six planets 
(Uranus had not yet been discovered) because the five Platonic solids fit 
between the spheres of the six planets.  He later abandoned this theory well 
before his discovery that the planets moved in elliptical orbits.

     - James A. Landau
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