Extracted text
Editorial transcription, lightly normalized from the scan. Line-break hyphenation, spacing, capitalization, and unmistakable OCR errors have been repaired; the claims remain those of The Flaming Sword.
EDITOR FLAMING SWORD:—As a student of astronomy, I cannot see how it is possible for the Copernican system to be wrong. It seems to me to be such a net-work of facts as to constitute a scientific masterpiece. It is certainly the result of centuries of progress and development, where all the intricacies of astronomical phenomena are all accounted for so beautifully and perfectly,—the cause of day and night, the lunations of the moon, planetary distances, parallaxes, motions, and perturbations, the precession of the equinoxes, the return of the comets, and many striking evidences of the accuracy of the entire system. We may leave the earth out of the question, and take the hundreds of remarkable corroborations in actual facts and figures of astronomical phenomena, and prove the system to be correct.— Student.
At one time the Tychonic and the Copernican systems hung in the same balance; and for a long time it was not known which would be the system into which the facts of astronomical discovery and observation would be woven to make up the fabric of fallacy. Both systems were founded on assumptions, and both were equally without proof of the correctness of their conclusions. The one was as susceptible of accounting for all the phenomena of the heavens as the other; and yet the one had for its foundation a stationary convex earth, and the other, a convex earth revolving about the sun. If the Tychonic system had been the one adopted, all the facts of astronomy now incorporated in the Copernican theory
would have found as consistent places in the Tychonic system ; and today it would be equally as complex as the Copernican system, and equally marvelous in the eyes of the unthinking public.
The mind of the student amazed at the Copernican system, is not aware of the processes through which the Copernican system has been developed. Then, we might ask, what is the Copernican system? Many things taught as astronomical truth twenty-five years ago are denied today by astronomers; Newton's ideas are not now accepted ; and Kepler's laws are being discarded. The system has changed in nearly every respect. If the system were true, it would have been true when it was founded ; and if it were
true then, why, of course, it could not be true today, considering the many radical changes made in it. We see nothing of its beauty nor of its harmony ; to us it is a system full of inconsistencies, absurdities, and contradictions, with its hundreds of unsolved problems. As a student of astronomy—of one system, perhaps—you cannot see how it can possibly be wrong. As teachers of astronomy, familiar with all systems and with the history of their development, and in possession of the knowledge of the fundamental premise and principles which form the basis of the true System, we cannot possibly see how any part of the Copernican theory can be correct. We know that it is not.
However, we may agree that there are some general conclusions in the modern system that are almost universally accepted today ; and in these conclusions there are dovetailed hundreds of facts of phenomena, making a seeming harmony. But what is the secret of the development of the system ? Phenomena were observed, and theories were devised to fit the appearances. There would be some explanation of the phenomena observed ; and no matter how false, the work of men for hundreds of years seems marvelous to a single mind, as it views the field in its magnitude, in ignorance of how it was developed. Is it not clear to be seen that where theories are made to fit phenomena or appearances, that the appearances, taken as facts, will appear to be in harmony with the theory ? This is where the astronomers have humbugged the world all along. They know that there is nothing with which to prove the system true. They observe phenomena; fit them in a theory; and then the people look from the theory to the appearances, and marvel at the work of astronomers !
Astronomers have supposed that the objects they observe in the heavens are remote in space, outside of the earth. Planets and stars have apparent movements on observed arcs in regular periods; and any system of astronomy having a series of circles or ellipses, can account for all the movements of the planets. Astronomers do leave the earth out of the question, and substitute an impossible thing to stand upon. The Koreshan System is not founded on assumption, but on the demonstrated premise of the earth's concavity; we must take the earth—the basic premise—into consideration. The Copernican system is a perversion of the truth. Turn the theory outside in, with all its complexities, intricacies, and facts, and the correct system is seen as a marvel of completeness ! Koreshan Cosmogony is that system, solving all problems, revealing all mysteries, containing all truth; it is the Astronomy of future ages.
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The source scans remain the record. This page preserves the periodical’s argument without presenting its conclusion as an independently established result.
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 14, No. 14 · Feb 1900 · PDF pp. 11–12