“Fireflies Flashing in Unison”: Percival Lowell,Edward Morse and the Birth of Planetology

The following abbreviations have been used in the references:

PML: Peabody Museum Library.

LOA: Lowell Observatory Archives.

HUA: Harvard University Archives.

MDLC: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

On 22 October 1916, three weeks before his untimely death from a stroke, Lowell addressed his friend as follows: Dear Morse Sama [Mr.] Oki ni ari [thanks] for your ‘Fireflies Flashing in Unison.’ does it mean you and me? I mentioned your ‘Mars and its Mystery’ recommending it at the Universities of Washington and California in lectures there the other day. Always affecly yours Lowell to Morse, PML.

The first public use of the term ‘planetology’ occurred in late 1906 either in Lowell's Lowell Institute lectures on “Mars as the abode of life” or Morse's report on his Flagstaff work in Mars and its mystery (Boston, 1906), 71–80. The Oxford English dictionary supplement clearly errs in locating its first use in Lowell's 1907 Century magazine articles on “Mars as the abode of life”. The two fullest accounts of Lowell's career are Hoyt Graves William , Lowell and Mars (Tucson, 1976) and Lowell Lawrence A. , A biography of Percival Lowell (New York, 1935). Two other important accounts of Lowell's work are: Crowe Michael , The extraterrestrial life debate, 1750–1900: The idea of a plurality of worlds from Kant to Lowell (Cambridge, 1986) and Sheehan William , Planets and perceptions: Telescopic views and interpretations, 1609–1909 (Tucson, 1988). Wayman Dorothy , Edward Sylvester Morse: A biography (Cambridge, 1942) discusses Mars and its mystery on pp. 394–7 without considering it as an outgrowth of planetology. Three otherwise helpful accounts of Morse's career are: Rosenstone Robert , Mirror in the shrine: American encounters with Meiji Japan (Cambridge, 1988); Kingsley J. S. , “Edward Sylvester Morse (1838–1925)”, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, lxi (1925–26), 549–55, and Howard L. O. , “Edward Sylvester Morse, 1838–1925: A biographical sketch”, Biographical memoirs, National Academy of Sciences, xvii (1937), 3–29. Lowell's two accounts of planetary evolution are: Mars as the abode of life (New York, 1908) and The evolution of worlds (New York, 1909).

Lowell's Percival “Means, methods and mistakes in the study of planetary evolution” was submitted to the Royal Astronomical Society on 15 November 1905, but was never published. The manuscript copy is located in LOA.

Baker Keith in his study of The channels of Mars (Austin, 1982) remarked that “Lowell and his contemporaries were pioneers in the modern science of comparative planetology. It is true that Lowell's geology was naive, his theories too superficial, and his writing too sensational. However, he drew attention to the study of the planets as a specialized field, one involving fascinating interdisciplinary work in geology, atmospheric science, geophysics and even biology” (p. 13). A copy of Lowell's undergraduate essay is on file at HUA. Lowell's questioning of the nebular hypothesis was evident in The solar system (Boston, 1903), the published version of a series of lectures he delivered at MIT in the autumn of 1902.

See Lowell , “Means, methods and mistakes…” (ref. 3), 14–4. John Lankford discusses.

Denning's views in “Amateurs versus professionals: The controversy over telescope size in late Victorian science”, Isis, lxxi (1981), 11–28. On questions of amateur and professional, see also Lankford John , “Amateurs and astrophysics: A neglected aspect in the development of a scientific specialty”, Social studies of science, xi (1981), 275–303; Rothenberg Marc , “Organization and control: Professionals and amateurs in American astronomy, 1899–1918”, ibid., 305–25; Chapman Allan , “William Lassell (1799–1880): Practitioner, patron and ‘grand amateur’ of Victorian astronomy”, Vistas in astronomy, xxxii (1988), 341–70; Berman Morris , “‘Hegemony’ and the amateur tradition in British science”, Journal of social history, viii (1975), 30–50.

Lowell , “Means, methods and mistakes…” (ref. 3), 1–4.

The first successful photographs of Mars by Lampland were announced to the world in May 1905, just as Morse appeared on the scene. Hoyt , Lowell and Mars , 173–5. Lowell remarked that “The resemblance, distant but distinctive, of the climatic conditions necessary on earth for the best scanning of Mars with those which prove to be actually existent on that other world has a bearing on the subject worth considerable attention” (Mars and its canals, 17).

For biographies of Lowell and Morse , see ref. 2.

Lowell to Morse , 2 March 1905. Even after Morse returned to Boston, Lowell and his assistants were still engaged in carrying out unsuccessful spectrographic research for evidence of chlorophyll on Mars to compare with results from the Moon — a line of inquiry that had been suggested by Morse ( Lowell to Morse , 16 July 1905, PML). Morse gave an effusive dedication of Mars and its mystery to “Percival Lowell who has by his energy and scientific spirit established a new standard for the study of Mars…” and relied heavily on Lowell to supply charts and maps and even to proofread the text as well as for moral support ( Lowell to Morse , 16 July 1905, 25 Nov. 1905, no date, PML; Hill to Lowell , 22 June 1905, Lowell to Giacobini , 25 Nov. 1905, 25 May 1906, 7 May 1907, LOA). In the Morse papers (PML) is a list of public lectures he delivered between 1906 and 1910, ten of which were on the topic of Mars. Morse also wrote a feature for the Boston globe entitled “My 34 nights on Mars” (7 Oct. 1906). Following its publication, Lowell not only recommended the book to readers, but helped to promote its author for numerous public lectures on Mars.

On Lowell's use of Dana , see Mars and its canals , 131, 139, 140; on the use of Merriam, see ibid., 18, 19, 379.

Lowell , Mars and its canals , 111; Lowell , in fact, had toyed briefly with such an extraterrestrial approach to the markings on the Earth in his earlier book Mars before lapsing into a detailed analysis of his drawings of Mars's surface ( Lowell P. , Mars (Boston, 1895), 130). Lowell's place among advocates of an extraterrestrial perspective is analysed in Guthke Karl S. , The last frontier: Imagining other worlds from the Copernican Revolution to modern science fiction, transl. by Atkins Helen (Ithaca, 1990 [first publ. 1983]), 354–62.

Lowell , Mars and its canals, 149.

Morse , Mars, 141, 143.

Morse , Mars , 50, 107–8, 112–13, 45; Lowell , Mars and its canals, 195, 205, 361–2. This extraterrestrial perspective was so persuasive to Morse that he extended it beyond the observation of lines to consider the nature of white spots on Mars. He noted that tobacco fields in Puerto Rico or Connecticut, when protected in the summer by a white filament cover, would resemble those spots on Mars.

Both Morse and Lowell were dedicated partisans of Darwin and Huxley. Morse had broken with Agassiz over the theory of evolution and had actually visited Huxley in London. See Wayman , Morse , 312. He endorsed Huxley's scientific world-view in Mars and its mystery (pp. 3, 104, 171). As for Lowell, he ordered, read and marked the nine-volume set of Huxley's complete works at the Observatory.

Morse , Mars , 11–13. For Lowell, the goal of “cosmic comprehension” could be achieved only by considering what is most distant from and strange to men (Mars and its canals, 39, 383).

Morse , Mars , 5–6, 8–9; with a brief allusion to the opposition among scientists to “most advances since Galileo's time”, Lowell made the same point somewhat more obliquely (Mars and its canals, 39).

Morse , Mars , 71, 72, 75, 77. It is evident that Lowell was in full agreement with Morse's critique of traditional astronomy. He remarked: “mental effacement is as vital to good observation as mental assertion is afterward to pregnant reasoning. For a man should be a machine in collecting his data, a mind in coordinating them. To reverse the process, as is sometimes done, is not conducive to science” (Mars and its canals, 289).

Morse , Mars , 73. The ability to articulate a subject clearly in terms accessible to a popular audience was evidence that the student of the idea had mastered it fully, according to Lowell. “Did we but know the uttermost of the subject we could make it singularly clear.” Lowell further claimed that professionals would derive benefit from “a popular book” inasmuch as it would show the “articulation — how the skeleton of it [science] is put together and what may be the mode of attachment of its muscles”. Thus, popularization was not only consistent with, but almost a prerequisite for, rigorous thought. To be convincing, however, it must be the product of a hands-on knowledge of the subject. The researcher himself must write up his findings in order to give “an aroma of actuality which cannot be filtered through another mind without sensible evaporation” (Lowell, Mars and its canals, p. viii). Lowell's version of popularization was quite similar to the one advanced by Huxley T. H. in Discourses biological and geological: “I found that the task of putting truths learned in the field, the laboratory and the museum into language which, without bating a jot of scientific accuracy shall be generally intelligible, taxed such scientific and literary faculty as I possessed to the uttermost; indeed, my experience has furnished me with no better corrective of the tendency to scholastic pedantry which besets all those who are absorbed in pursuits remote from the common ways of men, and become habituated to think and speak in the technical dialect of their own little world…” (pp. v–vi). Morse addressed the issue of popularization only indirectly in his diatribe against technical language; in the preface to Mars (p. vii) he explained that his book was for the “general reader”.

Morse to Newcomb , 3 Dec. 1905, MDLC. It was precisely this question of perception, along with the credentials of the authors, that was taken up by reviewers, four of whom discussed simultaneously in their reviews the 1906 books on Mars by Lowell and Morse. While these critics were impressed with the empirical data and drawings in Lowell's volume, two of them cast doubt on the reality of the canals, arguing that the detection of fine linear markings at the limits of viewing was problematical. The reviewers were offended by the polemical tone of Morse's work and unpersuaded by his efforts as a zoologist to justify his authority on matters Martian, suggesting that the rising disciplinary professionalism of the period was already a powerful force. For critics' responses, see Brewster E. T. , “The Earth and the Heavens”, Atlantic monthly, c (1907), 262–3; Howe Herbert A. , “The red planet Mars”, Dial, 1 Feb. 1907, 75–77; anon. (reported by Morse and Lowell to Simon Newcomb ), “Two books on Mars”, Nation , 4 April 1907, 317–18; and anon., “New books on astronomy”, Independent, lxi (1906), 1567–8. The Dial reviewer, to demonstrate Morse's polemicism, quoted his view of British astronomer E. W. Maunder: “I appeal to any honest and unprejudiced mind if a more incompetent person of the class to which he belongs could have been found in England for the Directorship of such a body [a committee appointed by the British Astronomical Association to investigate markings on the surface of Mars]” (Mars, 129).

Morse's admission of the janitor's superior perception is offered in Mars, 163.