Abstract
The 2¼-in. department store refractor with which I made my first observations of the Moon and planets was the kind serious hobbyists view with disdain. But it was the best I could afford at the time, and it was worth every penny – it brought me countless pleasurable hours as I followed in the tracks of the Master, Galileo.
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Notes
- 1.
Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods, Ktaadn (1848).
- 2.
Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964, pp. 292–293.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 293.
- 4.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Modern Library, 1936), p. 7.
- 5.
Keats, “Ode to Psyche,” lines 38–39.
- 6.
I invoke the hunter advisedly. It has been shown that moderately high levels enhance concentration and persistence. This is not only seen among hunters stalking game but also in males seeking desirable mates. See R. J. Andrew, Increased persistence of attention produced by testosterone, and it implications for the implications of sexual behavior. In: Biological Determinants of Sexual Behavior, ed. J. B. Hutchinson. Chichester, England: Wiley, 1978, pp. 255–275.
- 7.
As Christopher Benfey describes Percival Lowell in The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 177.
- 8.
Michel de Montaigne; Essays, Book I, ch. 39. It is more elegant in the French: “Il se faut réserver une arrière boutique toute notre.”
- 9.
Mircea Eliade writes: “The most ancient sanctuaries were hypaethral or built with an aperture on the roof. – The “eye of the dome,” symbolizing break-through from plane to plane, communication with the transcendent.” In: The Sacred and the Profane: the nature of religion. Translated by Willard R. Trask. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959, p. 49.
- 10.
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, July 10–12, 1841.
- 11.
H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds. In: Seven Science Fiction Novels of H. G. Wells. New York: Dover, no date, p. 312.
- 12.
John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol. III, Part IV, Chapter 16, Section 28.
- 13.
It is in the spring, I might add, Testosterone levels are highest. Needless to say there was (and is) something almost erotic about planets for me. I was especially drawn to the enchantress Venus, which in particular makes its most impressive showings (for Northern Hemisphere observers) in the spring, so that it could be said of me, as for most: “in the spring a young man’s fancy turns to love.”
- 14.
Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, Book I.
- 15.
From The Prelude (1850), XII, 207. The whole passage is as follows:
There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse, our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired.
- 16.
Quoted in ibid., p. 151.
- 17.
Simon Garfield, “The Passion that led me astray,” The Guardian, March 30, 2008.
- 18.
Quoted in Guthrie, The Nature of Paleolithic Art, p. 115.
- 19.
Keats, “Ode to Psyche,” lines 44–47.
- 20.
W. F. Denning, in his Notes on Telescopic Work, speaks discouragingly of “Friendly Indulgences.” “Every man whose astronomical predilections are known, and who has a telescope of any size,” he says, “is pestered with applications from friends and others who wish to view some of the wonders of the heavens. Of course it is the duty of all of us to encourage a laudable interest in the science…. but the utility of an observer constituting himself a showman, and sacrificing many valuable hours which might be spent in useful observations, may be seriously questioned. … The time of our observers is altogether too valuable to be employed in this fashion… My own impression is that, except in special cases, the observer will best consult the interests of astronomy, as well as his own convenience and pleasure, by declining the character of showman; for depend upon it a person who appreciates the science in the right fashion will find ways and means to procure a telescope and gratify his tastes to the fullest capacity. Some years ago I took considerable trouble on several evenings in showing a variety of objects to a clerical friend, who expressed an intention to buy a telescope and devote his leisure to the science. I spent many hours in explanations &c.; but some weeks later my pupil informed me that he really could not afford to purchase instruments. Yet I found soon after that he afforded [a considerable sum] in a useless embellishment of the front of his residence, and it so disgusted me that I resolved to waste no more precious time in a similar way.”
- 21.
Quoted in Frank E. Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press at Harvard University Press, 1968, p. 104.
- 22.
This was not my first case of great good luck, astronomically speaking. I was also fortunate in having been present in the track of totality at the solar eclipse of June 30, 1954, which passed through Minneapolis. However, being only 12 days old, I am afraid I have no recollection of it!
- 23.
The book was fine juvenile offering: Tony Simon, The Search for Planet X (New York: Basic Books, 1962). I returned to it recently, and found I could still read it with pleasure.
- 24.
For information about Burnham, I am following Tony Ortega, “Sky Writer,” Phoenix New Times, September 25, 1997, which is likely to remain the definitive account of Burnham’s sad life.
- 25.
George Steiner, “A Death of Kings.” In: George Steiner: a Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 173.
- 26.
H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon, op. cit., p. 8.
- 27.
Richard Baum to William Sheehan; personal correspondence, November 24, 1989.
- 28.
Elsa Schiaparelli, Shocking Life. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1954, p. 25.
- 29.
Daniel Tammet, who in Born on a Blue Day: a memoir. New York: Free Press, 2006, p. 27.
- 30.
Wells, The War of the Worlds, p. 312. I have always admired poor Ogilvy, though he is a character in fiction; he perished in the pit in which the Martians landed on Horsell Common. I almost named my observatory after him.
- 31.
John Ruskin, “The Two Boyhoods,” in Modern Painters, volume V, part 9, chapter 9.
- 32.
Bernd Heinrich, Racing the Antelope: what animals can teach us about running and life. New York: HarperCollins, 2001, p. x.
- 33.
John Keats to Benjamin Bailey, November 22, 1817.
- 34.
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory. London: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 51.
- 35.
I assume that means I have the seven-repeat (7R) allele of the human dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) gene which has been associated with both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and the personality trait of novelty-seeking which, though proximally I can trace it to inheritance from my alcoholic and vagabonding maternal grandfather, William Robinson, is a mutation that seems to have occurred quite recently during human evolution (during the late Pleistocene) and been strongly selected for as conferring some evolutionary advantage during those climatically unstable and wild times. See: Y.-C. Ding et al., Evidence of positive selection acting at the human dopamine receptor D4 gene locus, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (January 8, 2002), vol. 99, no. 1, 309–314. For an interesting perspective on ADHD, see Thom Hoffman, Attention Deficit Disorder: a different perception (Grass Valley, CA: Underwood Books, 2nd ed., 1997).
- 36.
Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957, p. 63.
- 37.
Mick Conefrey, A Teacup in a Storm: an explorer’s guide to life. (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), p. 90.
- 38.
John Milton, Paradise Lost, II, 1013–1020.
- 39.
Ibid., II, 1043–1044.
- 40.
R. Dale Guthrie, The Nature of Paleolithic Art, pp. 246–247.
- 41.
Ibid., p. 99.
- 42.
William Sheehan, Planets and Perception: telescopic views and interpretations. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988, p. 99. In the same work, I also coined the term “tachistoscope effect,” since the effect is similar to what a viewer would see through this device, used by perceptual psychologists at the turn of the twentieth century to analyze perceptions during brief exposures.
- 43.
Guthrie, The Nature of Paleolithic Art, pp. 99–100.
- 44.
According to Walt Unsworth, Everest, p. 78: “George Mallory saw in oxygen a challenge to the human spirit an attack by Science on natural values.” Or in the words of George Finch, who advocated its use: “there existed another force of oxygen antagonists, largely unscientific, who were willing enough to admit that oxygen might, indeed, have its uses, but condemned it on the ground that its employment was unsporting and, therefore, un-British.”
- 45.
Wordsworth, Prelude, I, 23.
- 46.
H. G. Wells, “In the Avu Observatory.” In: Best Science Fiction Stories of H. G. Wells (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), p. 276.
- 47.
Percival Lowell, Mars and Its Canals (New York: Macmillan, 1906), p. 8.
- 48.
To be perfectly correct, it was the character in Lovecraft’s abortive novel, Azaroth, these words describe. The 500 words of the beginning of this novel are quoted in their entirety in a letter from H. P. Lovecraft to Frank Belknap Long, June 9, 1922.
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Sheehan, W. (2010). By Passion Driven. In: A Passion for the Planets. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5971-3_2
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