Please ignore the example of bad spelling in the subject line.
harry
On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 11:10 PM, Harry Veeder <hveeder...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.astro.virginia.edu/class/oconnell/astr121/comte.html
>
> On the subject of stars, all investigations which are not ultimately
> reducible to simple visual observations are ... necessarily denied to
> us. While we can conceive of the possibility of determining their
> shapes, their sizes, and their motions, we shall never be able by any
> means to study their chemical composition or their mineralogical
> structure ... Our knowledge concerning their gaseous envelopes is
> necessarily limited to their existence, size ... and refractive power,
> we shall not at all be able to determine their chemical composition or
> even their density... I regard any notion concerning the true mean
> temperature of the various stars as forever denied to us.
>
> -- August Comte,1835
>
> (before the advent of spectroscopy)
>
> harry
>
