Abstract
THIS work is of the type that in some libraries is politely classified as ‘paradoxical science.’ Among the author's special contributions to the theory of the solar system is the hypothesis that magnetic fields, of the sun, planets, and comets, play a large part in determining the motions of these heavenly bodies; for example, he concludes that “a magnetic cause rather than gravity underlies precessional movement and change of axial inclination” of the earth (p. 66). Again, “The spheroidal forms of sun and planets may be largely due to the magnetic ‘globe’ that helps to hold them together. Maybe the oblateness of the forms of Saturn and Jupiter is not due entirely to their rapid rotations, but also to the oblate form of a magnetic field on which their highly vaporized and ionized constituents are hung” (p. 19). Another example of the style may be quoted: “With the idea of the sun as an organic unity in view, so that no strong character in his nature is separate in itself but derives its sustenance from the contributions of service extended to it by other members in its body, as they likewise depend on it, the sun as magnet may for the time being be left, to consider what other agencies are operating in this Great Builder of energetic forms”(p. 21). The work, like most of its class, is the product of earnest and industrious labour on a large mass of undigested scientific reading, on which imagination has been allowed to play, unbridled by any attempt at quantitative estimation. The second volume is of a semimetaphysical character.
A Theory of the Solar System.
By Percy John Harwood. Part 1. Pp. iii + 94. 10s. Part 2. Pp.ii + 64. 5s. (Brighton: The Author, Endersby, Ainsworth Avenue, Ovingdean, 1928.)
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A Theory of the Solar System . Nature 122, 344 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/122344a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/122344a0