192 CHARLES BABBAGE. 



Ibim auy little advautage which might result from it. It may, however, 

 be necessary to guard against one mistake into which persons might 

 fall. 



If an observer calculate particular stars from a catalogue which 

 makeS'them accord precisely with the rest of his results, whereas had 

 they been computed from other catalogues the difference would have 

 been considerable, it is very unfair to accuse him of cooMng ; for those 

 catalogues may have been notoriously inaccurate, or they may have 

 been superseded by others more recent, or made with better instru- 

 ments 5 or the observer may have been totally ignorant of their exist- 

 ence. 



It sometimes happens that constant quantities in formulas given by 

 the highest authorities, although they differ among themselves, yet 

 they will not suit the materials. This is precisely the point in which 

 the skill of the artist is shown ; and an accomplished cook will carry 

 himself triumphantly through it, provided, happily, some mean value 

 of such constants will fit his observations. He will discuss the relative 

 merits of formulas he has just knowledge enough to use; and, with 

 admirable candor, assigning their proper share of applause to Bessel, 

 to Gauss, and to Laplace, he will take that mean value of the constant 

 used by three such philosophers which will make his own observations 

 accord to a miracle. 



There are some few reflections I would venture to suggest to those 

 who cook, although they may not receive the attention which, in my 

 opinion, they deserve, from not coming from the pen of an adept. 



In the first place, it must require much time to try different formulas. 

 In the next place, it may happen that, in the progress of human knowl- 

 edge, more correct formulas may be discovered, and constants may be 

 determined with far greater precision. Or it may be found that some 

 physical circumstance influences the results, (although unsuspected at 

 the time,) the measure of wbicn circumstance may perhaps be recovered 

 from other contemporary registers of facts.* Or, if the selection of 

 observations has been made with the view of its agreeing precisely with 

 the latest determination, there is some little danger that the average of 

 the whole may differ from that of the chosen ones, owing to some law of 

 nature dependent on the interval between the two sets, which law some 

 future philosopher may discover ; and thus the very best observations 

 may have been thrown aside. 



In all these, and in numerous other cases, it would most probably hap- 

 pen that the cook would procure a temporary reputation for unrivaled 

 accuracy at the expense of his permanent fame. It might also have the 

 effect of rendering even all his crude observations of no value; for that 

 part of the scientific world whose opinion is of most weight is generally 

 so unreasonable as to neglect altogether the observations of those in 



Imagine, by way of example, the state of tlie barometer' or thermometer. 



