George Biddell Airy: Other

George Biddell Airy was English mathematician and astronomer. Explore interesting quotes on other.
George Biddell Airy: 26 quotes0 likes

“The elucidation of the theory of centripetal and disturbing forces is necessarily less complete. Still… a general conception of the nature of the action of those forces… sufficient to preserve the student from the gross errors… may be obtained from explanations like those here offered. The methods of ascertaining the weight of the Earth and other bodies are… more difficult of explanation; yet… something may be done even in these.”

George Biddell Airy

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

“[H]ow much of the fundamentals of Astronomy may be obtained with the coarsest observation with the unaided eye. …the science which is thus obtained by personal observations is vastly superior (as far as it goes) to that which is obtained by any other method. …The knowledge …inferred from actual personal observation carries with it a degree of reality and certainty, as the veritable science of external objects, which nothing else can give.”

George Biddell Airy

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

“[T]he methods used for measuring Astronomical distances are in some applications absolutely the same as the methods of ordinary theodolite-surveying, and are in other applications equivalent to them…”

George Biddell Airy

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

“In conversing with persons who are not officially attached to Observatories or in other ways professionally cognizant of the technicalities of practical Astronomy but who nevertheless display great interest… these persons appear to regard the determination of measures like those of the distance of the Sun and Moon as mysteries beyond ordinary comprehension… [and] when persons well acquainted with the general facts of Astronomy are introduced into an Observatory, they are for the most part utterly unable to understand anything which they see…
The measure of the Moon's distance involves no principle more abstruse than the measure of the distance of a tree on the opposite bank of a river. The principles of construction of the best Astronomical instruments are as simple and as closely referred to matters of common school-education and familiar experience, as are those of the common globes, the steam engine, or the turning-lathe; the details are usually less complicated.”

George Biddell Airy

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)