Abstract
I HAVE only now (July 12) noticed Prof. Tait's remark respecting a sentence, or rather half a sentence, which he quotes from an article of mine in the Cornhill Magazine for June. It runs thus: “What mathematicians call the moving force exerted by the earth on the moon is eighty-one times greater than the corresponding force exerted by the moon on the earth,” This admits of an interpretation implying gross ignorance on my part —ignorance, viz., of the fact that the moon pulls the earth just as strongly as the earth pulls the moon. It also admits of an interpretation accordant with fact, for the moving force exerted by the earth on each unit of mass in the moon is eighty-one times greater than the corresponding force exerted by the moon on each unit of mass in the earth. I do not think anyone is likely to believe that I made the mistake imputed to me by Prof. Tait, in this instance, any more than that I made an equally absurd blunder which he attributed to me in your columns several months ago, or that he himself made the ludicrous blunder attributed to him (in jest) by my humorous friend, Prof. Nipher, of St. Louis. But as a mere matter of fact, I may point out that the half-sentence quoted by him is completed by a half-sentence leaving no doubt as to my real meaning, and is immediately preceded by the statement that “the moon pulls the earth just as strongly as the earth pulls the moon.”
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PROCTOR, R. The Earth and Moon. Nature 16, 227 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/016227d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/016227d0
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