INTRODUCTION 13 



Here, then, is the net result of two centuries of New- 

 tonian philosophy of the labor of hundreds of thousands 

 of individuals who, in one capacity or another, have bent 

 themselves heart and soul to the task of solving these 

 great problems, and of untold millions of treasure un- 

 stintingly poured out by philanthropists and governments 

 to the same end ! Who is there so blind as not to see that 

 Newtonian science has reached the limit of its develop- 

 ment f Like the Ptolemaic system, it is only an approxi- 

 mation to the ultimate truth, though, to be sure, a very 

 much closer approximation. The epicycle system broke 

 down of its own weight because there always remained, 

 after each cycle superadded, a diminishing, yet still ap- 

 preciable, discrepancy to be accounted for. Slight as this 

 excess must have seemed at the last, its correction was 

 destined never to be achieved by the then time-honored 

 method, but only by a complete overturning of the system 

 by Copernicus and Kepler. The full development of New- 

 tonian theory has conducted us of this day to a strangely 

 similar impasse. There is now that apparently trifling, 

 but really crucial decimal of Newcomb's to be accounted 

 for ! Every effort of mathematics has been exerted to 

 iron it out, but in vain ; and it is only fair to conclude that 

 it is permanently beyond the power of prevailing theory 

 to cope with. I expect to prove to the satisfaction of the 

 reader that the only way possible to overcome this ob- 

 stacle is, by a revolution of the present-day science of 

 astronomy no less drastic than that from the Ptolemaic 

 to the Copernican, a revolution, too, which will abund- 

 antly justify itself by automatically solving all the para- 

 mount problems above enumerated. 



The Elusiveness of the Obvious 



To my mind, the most striking mental peculiarity of 

 mankind in the past has been its proneness, in all ages, to 

 focus attention on the things at a distance rather than on 

 those close at hand, to prefer the abstruse to the simple, 

 the miraculous to the natural, the obscure to the obvious. 

 In fact, the epochal events in the life of Astronomy have 



