Lord Derwentwater's Lights: Prediction and the Aurora Polaris

The historical register, i (1716), 117; Salmon W. , The chronological historian: Containing a regular account of all material transactions and occurrences, ecclesiastical, civil, and miliary, relating to the English affairs, from the invasion of the Romans, to the present time (London, 1723), 358; Pointer J. , A chronological history of Great Britain: Or, an impartial abstract of the most remarkable transactions, and the most considerable occurrences, both civil and military, domestick and foreign, and particularly of all promotions, during the first year of the reign of His Majesty King George (London, 1716), 903.

Halley E. , “An account of the late surprizing appearance of the lights seen in the air, on the sixth of March last; with an attempt to explain the principal phænomena thereof”, Philosophical transactions, xxix (1716), 406–28 (in pp. 406–16). Whiston W. , An account of a surprizing meteor, seen in the air, March the 6th, 1715/16, at night (London, 1716), 26–53.

Pointer , op. cit. (ref. 1), 903.

Brekke A. and Egeland A. , The northern light: From mythology to space research (Berlin, 1983), 59–60.

Blanchard R. , Richard Steele's periodical journalism 1714–16 (Oxford, 1959), pp. xxv–xxviii. Gentleman's magazine, 1787, 57, 931; Notes and queries, clxxiii (1937), 377, 392.

The weekly journal, 10 March 1716. Hervey J. , Meditations and contemplations (Paisley, 1774), ii, 54.

For landscapes, see Cosgrove D. and Daniels S. , The iconography of landscape: Essays on the symbolic representation, design and use of past environments (Cambridge, 1988); for rainbows, see Gage J. , Colour and culture: Practice and meaning from Antiquity to abstraction (1993), 93–115; for caves, see Shortland M. , “Darkness visible: Underground culture in the golden age of geology”, History of science, xxxii (1994), 1–61.

Fara P. , “Northern possession: Laying claim to the aurora borealis”, History workshop journal, forthcoming (autumn 1996). Scientists now regard the northern and southern lights as linked aspects of a single global phenomenon, the aurora polaris. Because the northern hemisphere is far more densely populated, it is the aurora borealis that carries the more potent imagery, and which is the subject of most of this paper.

Baudrillard J. , The illusion of the end (Cambridge, 1994), 113.

For example: Park K. and Daston L. , “Unnatural conceptions: The study of monsters in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century France and England”, Past and present, xcii (1981), 20–54; Daston L. , “Marvelous facts and historical evidence in Early Modern Europe”, in Chandler J. Davidson A. I. and Harootnian H. (eds), Questions of evidence: Proof, practice, and persuasion across the disciplines (Chicago, 1994), 243–74; Schaffer S. , “Natural philosophy and public spectacle in the eighteenth century”, History of science, xxi (1983), 1–43 and “Newton's comets and the transformation of astrology”, in Curry P. (ed.), Astrology, science and society (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1987), 219–43.

Eather R. H. , Majestic lights: The aurora in science, history and the arts (Washington, 1980), 33–46; Falck-Ytter H. , Aurora: The northern lights in mythology, history and science (Edinburgh, 1985), 34–43; Akasofu S.-I. , Aurora borealis: The amazing northern lights (Anchorage, 1979), 6–21; Brekke and Egeland , op. cit. (ref. 4), 1–23.

Sarton G. , “Was Peiresc the first (in 1608) to offer a rational explanation of the rains of blood?”, Isis, xxxviii (1947), 96–97. Nature, iii (1870), 105, 174–5.

Thomas K. , Religion and the decline of magic (Harmondsworth, 1971), 103–12. Curry P. M. , Prophecy and power: Astrology in early modern England (Cambridge, 1989); Richardson R. , Death, dissection and the destitute (London, 1988), 3–29; Genuth S. S. , “Devils' hells and astronomers' heavens: Religion, method, and popular culture in speculations about life on comets”, in Nye M. J. Richards J. and Stuewer R. (eds), The invention of physical science (Dordrecht, 1992), 3–26; Flaherty G. , “The non-normal sciences: Survivals of Renaissance thought in the eighteenth century”, in Fox C. Porter R. and Wokler R. (eds), Inventing human science: Eighteenth-century domains (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1995), 271–91.

Hervey , op. cit. (ref. 6), ii, 58. Brontë C. , Villette (London, 1979), 381; for her fascination with explorers' journals during the search for the Franklin expedition, see Loomis C. C. , “The Arctic sublime”, in Knoepflmacher U. C. and Tennyson G. B. (eds), Nature and the Victorian imagination (Berkeley, 1977), 95–112, especially p. 103.

Tyldesley J. B. , “Gilbert White and the aurora”, Journal of the British Astronomical Association, lxxxvi (1976), 214–18. Briggs J. M. , “Aurora and Enlightenment: Eighteenth-century explanations of the aurora borealis”, Isis, lviii (1967), 491–503 includes many references to the philosophical literature. See also The Edinburgh review, clxiv (1886), 416–47.

Royal Society Journal Book (copy), xi, 108–21 (8 March 1716–26 April 1716). Wing V. , An almanack for the year of our lord God 1739 (London, 1739). For Wing, see Curry , op. cit. (ref. 13), 33–35, 121–2. See also Capp B. , Astrology and the English press: English almanacs 1500–1800 (London and Boston, 1979), 215–24, and Véron P. and Tamman G. A. , “Astronomical broadsheets and their scientific significance”, Endeavour, iii (1979), 163–70.

The best accounts, although flawed, are Nicolson M. and Rousseau G. S. , “This Long Disease, My Life”: Alexander Pope and the sciences (Princeton, 1968), 162–5 and Rousseau G. S. , “‘Wicked Whiston’ and the Scriblerians: Another ancients-moderns controversy”, Studies in eighteenth-century culture, xvii (1987), 17–44.

Burns R. M. , The great debate on miracles: From Joseph Glanvill to David Hume (London, 1981). Daston L. , “Marvelous facts and miraculous evidence in early modern Europe”, in Chandler J. Davidson A. I. and Harootunian H. (eds.), Questions of evidence: Proof, practice, and persuasion across the disciplines (Chicago and London, 1994), 243–74.

Addison J. , The free-holder (London, 1744), 148. The weekly journal; or, British gazeteer , 10 March 1716; see also ibid. , 24 March 1716 (against Mrs Powell's The orphan), and Nature, iii (1870), 46 for a quotation from The flying post of 8 March 1716. Defoe D. , A dialogue between a Whig and a Jacobite (London, 1716), 32. For the political affiliations, see Sutherland J. , The Restoration newspaper and its development (Cambridge, 1986).

Addison , op. cit. (ref. 19), 148–52. Defoe D. , The second-sighted highlander (London, 1715), 6: See Baine R. M. , Daniel Defoe and the supernatural (Athens, Georgia, 1968). Larner C. , Witchcraft and religion: The politics of popular belief (Oxford, 1984), 69–78.

Trevor-Roper H. , “The invention of tradition: The Highland tradition of Scotland”, in Hobsbawm E. and Ranger T. (eds), The invention of tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 15–41. Collins W. , “An ode, on the popular superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland”, in Crowe W. (ed.), The poems of William Collins (Bath, 1828), 68: See Wendorf R. , William Collins and eighteenth-century English poetry (Minneapolis, 1981).

Steele R. , Chit-chat, in a letter to a lady in the country, 10 March 1715, reproduced in Blanchard , op. cit. (ref. 5), 257–62, quotation from p. 261. Loftis J. , “Richard Steele's Censorium”, Huntington Library quarterly, xiv (1950), 43–66 (see p. 59 for a reproduction of Whiston's advertisement in The daily courant of 16 March 1716). Whiston , op. cit. (ref. 2), 54–78.

Gay J. , God's revenge against punning (London, 1716), 1 (formerly attributed to Alexander Pope: See Rousseau , op. cit. (ref. 17), 29–33). To judge from its title, another satirical example (which I have not seen) is Anon, A strange and true account of the appearing of Dr Partridge's ghost, on Saturday night last: With his full interpretation of the late prodigy of fires and lights in the sky. Good news for England (London, 1716) (for Partridge and Jonathan Swift, see Curry , op. cit. (ref. 13), 89–91, 105–9).

Anon, An essay concerning the late apparition in the heavens, on the sixth of March (London, 1716). Pointer J. , A rational account of the weather (London, 1738), 194–204. J. W., An O-yes from the court of Heaven to the northern nations, by the streaming lights that have appeared of late years in the air; or, mathematical reasons, shewing that the said lights, &c. are no less than superanatural (London, 1741). (Could this be John Whiston, William's nephew? As William Whiston became more visionary with age, he declared that the 1716 aurora signalled the forthcoming millennium, although critics pointed out that the frequency throughout Europe militated against attaching such predictive value to one particular episode: Whiston W. , Memoirs of the life and writings of Mr William Whiston (London, 1749), 608; Gentleman's magazine, lvii (1787), 164–5.)

Anon, “The phœnomenon: A poem on the late surprizing meteor seen in the sky, Mar 19. 1718.19” in Poems on several occasions (Oxford, 1719), 9–15.

Pointer , op. cit. (ref. 24), 198–9.

Thomson J. , The seasons (London, 1795), 168–9 (Autumnn, lines 1106–35): See Sambrook J. , James Thomson 1700–1748: A life (Oxford, 1991), 24–105 and McKillop A. D. , The background of Thomson's Seasons (Minneapolis, 1942), 62–67 (pp. 63–64 reproduces an earlier version of Thomson's description of the aurora, which he appears to have revised several times).

Aristotle , Meteorologica (ed. by Webster E. W. ) (Oxford, 1923), Book 1, sections 4–8. For instance, Martin B. , The philosophical grammar; being a view of the present state of experimental physiology, or natural philosophy (London, 1738), 195–205, and Pointer , op. cit. (ref. 24), 170–204.

Bloor D. , “Durkheim and Mauss revisited: Classification and the sociology of knowledge”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xiii (1982), 267–92; Dean J. , “Controversy over classification: A case study from the history of botany”, in Barnes B. and Shapin S. (eds), Natural order: Historical studies of scientific culture (Beverly Hills, 1979), 211–28. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Johann Fabricius introduced the German term Nordlicht, northern lights.

Halley , op. cit. (ref. 2), 406, 415.

de Mairan Dortous J.-J. , Traité physique et historique de l'aurore boréale (Paris, 1754); Legrand J-P. , “J.-J. Dortous de Mairan et l'origine des aurores”, La vie des sciences, ii (1985), 487–509. The second edition of 1754 (to which I refer) has the same title as the original 1733 edition. The first five sections are identical, but he added twenty “Eclaircissements”. The first nine of these (from 1746) were a direct response to Leonhard Euler's criticisms; he presented the remaining eleven to the Académie in 1751. In English, there was a substantial summary of the first edition, but no translation of either of them: Eames J. , “An account of a book entitled, Traité physique et historique de l'aurore boreale, par Mr de Mairan”, Philosophical transactions, xxxviii (1734), 243–57.

Grove R. H. , Green imperialism: Colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge, 1995), 160–7: Hales's book about the earthquake was published in 1750. Rousseau G. S. , “The London earthquakes of 1750”, Cahiers d'histoire mondiale, xi (1968), 436–51.

Westrum R. , “Science and social intelligence about anomalies: The case of meteorites”, Social studies of science, viii (1978), 461–93.

Halley , op. cit. (ref. 2), 416. Derham W. , “Observations on the lumen boreale, or streaming on Oct 8, 1726”, Philosophical transactions , xxxiv (1727), 245–52. Whiston , op. cit. (ref. 2), 26–53. As just one example of the widespread interest, the auroral displays of January 1750 generated many reports, several of them illustrated: Gentleman's magazine, xx (1750), 7, 78, 90, 112–13, 378. Bone N. , “The great auroral storm of 1989 March 13–14”, Astronomy now, iii/6 (1989), 22–29.

For references to the primary literature, see Briggs , op. cit. (ref. 15) and Lindqvist S. , “The spectacle of science: An experiment in 1744 concerning the aurora borealis”, Configurations, i (1993), 57–94.

For example, Short T. , New observations, natural, moral, civil, political and medical, on city, town, and country bills of mortality (London, 1750), 324–495, especially 479–83. Jordanova L. , “Earth science and environmental medicine”, in Jordanova L. and Porter R. , Images of the Earth (Chalfont St Giles, 1979), 119–46; Grove , op. cit. (ref. 32), 153–67; Glacken C. J. , Traces on the Rhodian shore: Nature and culture in western thought from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century (Berkeley, 1967), 499–713; Feldman T. S. , “Late Enlightenment meteorology”, in Frängsmyr T. Heilbron J. and Rider R. (eds), The quantifying spirit in the eighteenth century (Berkeley, 1990),.

Feldman T. S. , “The ancient climate in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century”, in Shortland M. (ed.), Science and nature: Essays in the history of the environmental sciences (Oxford, 1993), 23–40; Fara P. , Sympathetic attractions: Magnetic practices, beliefs and symbolism in eighteenth-century England (Princeton, 1996), 146–70. Terrall M. , “Representing the Earth's shape: The polemics surrounding Maupertuis's expedition to Lapland”, Isis, lxxxiii (1992), 218–37.

de Mairan Dortous , op. cit. (ref. 31), 570: “& n'est-il pas moralement impossible qu'un tel accord, entre tant de parties & d'obversations différentes, soit l'effet du hasard?”.

de Mairan Dortous , op. cit. (ref. 31), 168–213, 466–570. de Mairan Dortous , Conjectures sur l'origine de la fable d'Olympe, en explication & confirmation de ce qui en a été dit dans l'un des éclaircissemens ajoûtés au Traité physique & historique de l'aurore boréale (Paris, 1761) (discussed in Gentleman's magazine, xxx (1760), 274–6). For modern analyses of these problems, see: Eddy J. , “Climate and the role of the Sun”, in Rotberg R. I. and Rabb T. K. (eds), Climate and history: Studies in interdisciplinary history (Princeton, 1981), 145–67; Schröder W. , “Auroral frequency in the 17th and 18th centuries and the Maunder minimum”, Journal of atmospheric and terrestrial physics, xli (1979), 445–6; Stephenson F. R. , “Historical evidence concerning the Sun: Interpretation of sunspot records during the telescopic and pretelescopic eras”, Philosophical transactions, A cccxxx (1990), 499–512; Stothers R. , “Ancient aurorae”, Isis, lxx (1979), 85–95.

Maunder E. W. , “A prolonged sunspot minimum”, Knowledge, xvii (1894), 173–6. Clerke A. C. , “A prolonged sunspot minimum”, Knowledge, xvii (1894), 206–7. Eddy J. A. , “The Maunder minimum”, Science, cxcii (1976), 1189–202, quotations on p. 1199.

Berlin I. , “The divorce between the sciences and the humanities”, in Hardy H. (ed.), Against the current: Essays in the history of ideas (Oxford, 1979), 80–110. Collini S. , “Introduction”, in Snow C. P. , The two cultures (Cambridge, 1993), pp. vii–lxxi. Levine G. , “One culture: Science and literature”, in Levine G. (ed.), Science and literature (Madison, Wis., 1987), 3–32. Marx L. , “The environment and the ‘two cultures’ divide”, in Fleming J. R. and Gemery H. A. (eds), Science, technology and the environment: Multidisciplinary perspectives (Akron, Ohio, 1994), 3–21.

Lewontin R. C. , “Facts and the factitious in natural sciences”, in Chandler J. Davidson A. I. and Harootnian H. (eds), Questions of evidence: Proof, practice, and persuasion across the disciplines (Chicago, 1994), 478–91. Ginzburg C. , “Clues: Roots of an evidential paradigm”, in Ginzburg C. , Myths, emblems, clues (London, 1990), 96–125. Wilson A. , “Foundations of an integrated historiography”, in Wilson A. (ed.), Rethinking social history: English society 1570–1920 and its interpretation (Manchester and New York, 1993), 293–335.

For a summary and references to Schove's numerous papers, see Schove D. J. , Sunspot cycles, (Stroudsberg, Penn., 1983), 106–9. Siscoe G. L. , “Evidence in the auroral record for secular solar variability”, Reviews of geophysics and space physics, xviii (1980), 647–58.

Le Roy Ladurie E. , The territory of the historian (Hassocks, Sussex, 1979), 295; Le Roy Ladurie E. , Times of feast, times of famine: A history of climate since the year 1000 (London, 1972), pp. xiii–xvi.

For example: Rotberg R. I. and Rabb T. K. (eds), Climate and history: Studies in interdisciplinary history (Princeton, 1981); Schröder W. (ed.), Historical events and people in geosciences (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1985); Pecker J. C. and Runcorn S. (eds), The Earth's climate and variability of the Sun over recent millennia: Geophysical, astronomical and archaeological aspects (London, 1990).

Lamb H. H. , Climate, history and the modern world (London and New York, 1982), 8–17. Geyer R. A. , “Preface and introduction”, in Geyer R. A. (ed.), A global warming forum: Scientific, economic and legal overview (Boca Raton, 1992), unpaginated. In 1992, the US Global Change Research Program Budget exceeded a thousand million dollars.

Burroughs W. J. , Weather cycles: Real or imaginary (Cambridge, 1992). Landsberg H. E. , “Past climates from unexploited written sources”, in Rotberg R. I. and Rabb T. K. (eds), Climate and history: Studies in interdisciplinary history (Princeton, 1981), 51–62. Bradley R. S. and Jones P. D. (eds), Climate since a.d. 1500 (London and New York, 1992), 17–268.

For a summary of catalogues, see Siscoe , op. cit. (ref. 43).

Brekke and Egeland , op. cit. (ref. 4), 10–23. See also Stothers , op. cit. (ref. 39), Schröder , op. cit. (ref. 39) and Stephenson , op. cit. (ref. 39).

Whiston , op. cit. (ref. 2); Whiston W. , An account of a surprizing meteor, seen in the air March 19. 1718/19 at night (London, 1719). See also Royal Society journal book (copy), xi, 312–8 (26 March 1719) and Halley E. , “An account of the Phoœnomena of a very extraordinary aurora borealis, seen at London on November 10. 1719. both morning and evening”, Philosophical transactions, xxx (1719), 1099–100.

Noyes G. R. , The poetical works of Dryden (Boston, 1950), 234 (in “The hind and the panther”); Notes and queries, cxxxvii (1937), 326–8. Schove D. J. , “English aurorae of ad 1660/61”, Journal of the British Astronomical Association, lxii (1951), 38–41, and “London aurorae of ad 1661”, ibid., lxiii (1953), 266–70; see Thomas , op. cit. (ref. 13), 103–12.

Johnson M. J. , “An address delivered at the annual general meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, February 13, 1857, on presenting the gold medal of the Society to M. Schwabe”, Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, xxvi (1858), 196–204. Lockyer quoted in Eddy , op. cit. (ref. 39), 150.

Eddy , op. cit. (ref. 39), Link F. , “Manifestations de l'activité solaire dans le passé historique”, Planetary and space science, xii (1964), 333–48, and Siscoe , op. cit. (ref. 43). Critiques include Schröder , op. cit. (ref. 39), Stephenson , op. cit. (ref. 39), and Stothers , op. cit. (ref. 39).

Schove D. J. , “The sunspot cycle, 649 b.c. to a.d. 2000”, Journal of geophysical research, lx (1955), 127–46 and “Auroral numbers since 500 bc”, Journal of the British Astronomical Association, lxxii (1962), 30–35. Link F. , op. cit. (ref. 53) and “On the history of the aurora borealis”, in Beer A. (ed.), Vistas in astronomy, ix (1967), 297–306.

Pittock A. B. , “A critical look at long-term Sun-weather relationships”, Reviews of geophysics and space physics, xvi (1978), 400–20; Burroughs , op. cit. (ref. 47), 63–92.

Eddy , op. cit. (ref. 39), especially pp. 166–7.

Burroughs , op. cit. (ref. 47), 94–170, quotation from p. 170.

Hildner Ernest , quoted in New scientist, 3 February 1996, 26.

Spencer Roy , quoted in Jones D. , “The greenhouse conspiracy” (UK TV Channel 4 script, 1990), 24. See also Pittock , op. cit. (ref. 55), 416–17.

Eddy , op. cit. (ref. 40); Link , op. cit. (ref. 53). See Grove J. M. , The little ice age (London and New York, 1988).

Lindzen S. , “Global warming: The origin and nature of alleged scientific consensus” (paper presented at the Vienna OPEC conference, 1992); Bate R. and Morris J. , Global warming: Apocalypse or hot air? (London, 1994); Michaels P. J. , Sound and fury: The science and politics of global warming (Washington, 1992); Balling R. C. , The heated debate: Greenhouse predictions versus climate reality (San Francisco, 1992); Emsley J. (ed.), The global warming debate: The report of the European science and environment forum (London, 1996).

Schneider , quoted in Bate and Morris , op. cit. (ref. 61), 49.

Baudrillard , op. cit. (ref. 9). Ross A. , Strange weather: Culture, science, and technology in the age of limits (London and New York, 1991), 193–249.