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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: On lunar distances
From: Dov Kruger
Date: 2002 Feb 5, 09:49 -0500
From: Dov Kruger
Date: 2002 Feb 5, 09:49 -0500
Peter Fogg wrote: >Sir Isaac Newton was a ... >But he complained that thinking about the motion of the moon always gave >him a headache. > It is said that the great triumph of 19th century science (really begun by Newton) was showing that the world was governed by linear equations, and the great triumph of 20th century science was proving that it wasn't ;-) It's no wonder that Newton didn't like the problem of lunar distances, as there is no neat analytic linear equation that you can solve to get the answer.... I second the thanks to George Huxtable and also thanks to Dan Allen who sacrificed his spine (now doesn't that sound altruistic?) so that we could all have the Bowditch lunars section online.