WCP2824

Letter (WCP2824.2714)

[1]1

68 Redcliffe Square.

London

S.W.

29.4.[19]032.

Dear Dr Wallace,

My principal criticism of your ably written Chapter3 relates to the Solar Cluster which has dropped out of Prof[essor]. Kapteyn’s4 scheme of the Universe. You will find my brief note about it with your typed sheets, which I now return in a [2] registered parcel.

One must not be surprised, where such enormously complex masses of data have to be treated, to find that conclusions regarding them have to be revised. Accept my apologies on behalf of astronomical science, which has no more laborious and candid notary than Kapteyn of Groningen.

The notes and letter you have been so good as to allow me to see are of extreme interest. [3] I enclose them with thanks for the privilege of their perusal.

Mr. Whittaker5 is a mathematician of the very highest order. Perhaps not more than half a dozen men have lived this century back (in your "Wonderful Century"6) who have rivalled his amazing intuitive power. So that one listens almost with bated breath, to the subversive views7 he expresses in his letter to Prof[essor]. Darwin8.

As to the spiral nebulae, I have long felt sure [4] that they were dominated by forces other than gravitational, though one cannot doubt that gravity exercises its power besides. But I long for the details of Mr. Whittaker’s enquiries if only they do not prove too abstruse for my capacity.

Believe me to be sincerely yours | Agnes M Clerke9 [signature]

1
Page numbered 130 in pencil in top RH corner and vertically in bottom LH corner of page.
2
Year determined from birth and death dates of author.
3

Wallace, A. R. (1903) Man’s place in the universe: A study of the results of scientific research in relation to the unity or plurality of worlds Chapter 4 The Distribution of the Stars p. 47. New York, McClure Phillips & Co.

This book expands on ARW’s 1903 article of the same title which appeared simultaneously in The Fortnightly Review and the New York Independent.

4
Kapteyn, Jacobus Cornelius (1851-1922). Dutch astronomer and first Professor of Astronomy and Theoretical Mechanics at the University of Groningen 1875-1921. He carried out extensive studies of the Milky Way and was the discoverer of evidence for galactic rotation.
5
Whittaker, Edmund Taylor (1873-1956). English mathematician who contributed widely to applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and the theory of special functions. He also worked on celestial mechanics and the history of physics.
6
Wallace A. R. (1898) The Wonderful Century; Its Successes and Its Failures. London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
7
In a letter to George Darwin (see Endnote 7) dated 24th April 1903 (WCP 2823), Whittaker (see Endnote 4) doubted that "the principal phenomena of the stellar universe (the spirality of nebulae, the occurrence of variables in star-clusters, etc.) are consequences of the law of gravitation at all". Rather than gravitation as defined by Newton’s Law, electrodynamic forces, which also obey an inverse square law, could be influential.
8
Darwin, George Howard (1845-1912). English astronomer and mathematician, the second son and fifth child of Charles and Emma Darwin. He became Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 1883. He studied tidal gravitational forces and formulated the fission theory of Moon formation.
9
British Museum stamp underneath.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP2824.2714)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2015-06-01] Transcription checked by Benny, Ruth [2015-06-01] Transcription checked by Sherwood, Danni [2020-08-10]

Enclosure (WCP2824.5338)

[1]

[.15. THE SOLAR CLUSTER.

Prof. Kapteyn can no longer be quoted as an authority in regard to the existence of a "solar cluster". In a communication of April 20, 1901, he withdrew the conclusion arrived at in 1893. He had then accepted as indubitable the result of Stumpe, Ristenpart, and others that "if the stars are arranged in groups according to their proper motions, the mean parallaxes of these groups are approximately proportional to the mean proper motions." Subsequently, he discovered this to be founded on illegitimate reasoning [side note: "?"], and to be discordant with facts. He accordingly no longer sees any reason to believe that there is any condensation of second Type stars near the sun.

It is, however, certainly true that the sun makes one of a group loosely scatted throughout the spherical space bounded equatorially by the Milky Way, and little more can be said confidently. If a "cluster" implies dynamical relations, there is no sign of its subsistence. But we are utterly ignorant of the dynamics of star-clusters.

p.23.

I should substitute "for "any body at or near the centre of such a system which had a velocity" & the words "any body traversing such a system with velocity".

[2] [blank page]

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Enclosure (WCP2824.5338)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Congerton, John [2019-02-21] Transcription checked by Congerton, John [2019-02-21] Transcription checked by Sherwood, Danni [2020-08-10]

Please cite as “WCP2824,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP2824