Oh! No! Mercury appears to be going backwards.
I thought Copernicus and Kepler had finally resolved the retrograde problem when they explained that the planets, the Wanderers, only seemed to move in “forward” and “backward” motions because of our changing perspective. Imagine cars racing around an elliptical (oval?) track. The drivers note the relative position of other cars from the perspectives of being on a smaller or larger ellipse, on the inside or outside path around the track. If a driver passes another, he sees that other car appear to move backwards, even though both vehicles move forward. Now imagine both cars on opposite sides of the track traveling at different speeds. The perspective would make cars appear to move sometimes backward and sometimes forward. That backward movement is called retrograde, and it was a big problem for those who observed a sky they believed revolved around a stationary Earth. Copernicus, and then Kepler, identified Earth and the other planets as those race cars, the paths of forward and backward motion their orbits. Mercury has the inside path and orbits the sun every 88 days; Earth is third out and has a 365.25-day run. Uranus, even farther out, makes its circuit at 30,688.5 Earth days. It’s easy for Mercury to lap Earth and even easier for Earth to lap distant Uranus.
Understanding retrograde planetary motions requires only rudimentary knowledge of Copernicus and Kepler. But hundreds of years of established facts mean little when people rely solely on their personal experience. Every generation has those who insist on reinventing the wheel, or, in this instance, the way planets wheel around the sky. With regard to understanding our physical world, we all begin in ignorance, regardless of what those a priori philosophers might tell us. And that initial ignorance is the way superstition and misinformation creep through history. So, is it a surprise that the current issue of The Old Farmer’s Almanac has advice on what to do when Mercury is in retrograde? The advice, such as “…before Mercury retrogrades, finish any tasks or projects at hand,” has no basis in anything other than ancient astrological beliefs.* Yet, there will be those in this generation—and in future generations—who will be concerned that the appearance of a race-track planet’s motion is an absolute, and not a relative, phenomenon and that retrograde motion has some control over human life.
Now, I know that if someone has never studied the centuries-old astrophysical knowledge of Copernicus and Kepler, there might be a tendency to understand the celestial objects from the limited perspective of personal experience. Of course, that experience, because we don’t feel Earth’s motion and don’t stand outside the Solar System, is essentially correct enough for daily living: It really doesn’t matter that on the way to the grocery store someone thinks that Mercury is running itself “backward.” The groceries will still be there; life will go on. It does matter, however, if one shapes tasks and attitudes by a distant and misunderstood planetary motion that was explained centuries ago.
That brings me to Shopenhauer’s essay on logic and dialectic. In “The Art of Controversy,” the philosopher distinguishes between the two, defining the former as “’the science of the laws of thought, that is, of the method of reason’” and the latter as “’the art of disputation.’”* Logic, according to Shopenhauer, is “the process of pure reason” that “should be capable of being constructed a priori. Dialectic, for the most part, can be constructed only a posteriori; that is to say, we may learn its rules by an experiential knowledge of the disturbance which pure thought suffers through the difference of individuality manifested in the intercourse between two rational beings....”***
Let’s belabor the point with regard to Dialectic. Shopenhauer continues:
…two rational beings, and also by acquaintance with the means which disputants adopt in order to make good against one another their own individual thought, and to show that it is pure and objective. For human nature is such that if A. and B. are engaged in thinking in common, and are communicating their opinions to one another on any subject, so long as it is not a mere fact of history, and A. perceives that B.’s thoughts on one and the same subject are not the same as his own, he does not begin by revising his own process of thinking, so as to discover any mistake which he may have made, but he assumes that the mistake has occurred in B.’s. In other words, man is naturally obstinate; and this quality in him is attended with certain results, treated of in the branch of knowledge which I should like to call Dialectic, but which, in order to avoid misunderstanding, I shall call Controversial or Eristical Dialectic. Accordingly, it is the branch of knowledge which treats of the obstinacy natural to man…Controversial Dialect is the art of disputing, and of disputing in such a way as to hold one’s own, whether one is in the right or wrong--per fas et nefas.
Ah! Per fas et nefas. Maybe you don’t know the Latin phrase, but you certainly have witnessed its manifestation in the numerous political and social arguments that stream daily across your smart phone, pad, or TV. It’s also manifest in the adherence to an ancient belief system that suggests some little rocky body called Mercury can influence your life simply because you see it from different perspectives throughout the year. Yes, right or wrong there will be those like the editors of The Old Farmer’s Almanac who will push millennia-old misunderstandings as truth by which one should live and govern the details of daily life. Yes, Mercury’s retrograde motion is in the minds of many a cause for concern—even though we know the proven race-track model of explanation offered long ago by Copernicus and Kepler.
Obstinate in your belief? Choosing Dialectic over Logic? Think personal experience is the ultimate guide to truth about the physical world? Choosing Dialectic over Logic in your daily intercourse with others?
Example: After explaining the geomorphology of streams to a freshman college geology class, I addressed the issue of flow direction. Streams flow downhill—though there’s an argument that the Mississippi flows slightly uphill through the sinking delta because of the push from the mass of water behind it, and another argument centered on the effects of tidal bores. Nevertheless, measurements and logic tell us that streams flow downhill just as shower water falls from the showerhead. So, I made the point that compass direction is irrelevant. Streams flow from higher ground to lower ground, from mountains to basins (both interior, as the Truckee River flows to landlocked Pyramid Lake in Nevada, and exterior, as most rivers ultimately empty into the ocean). Down a slope. That’s the important point. But after class a student approached me and said, “My mother told me that the Monongahela River flows backwards.” (Yes, like you, I tried to picture the front and back of water)
I said, “She probably means that the Monongahela trends toward the north, but that’s a common misconception based on the misunderstanding that makes synonyms of ‘up and down’ and ‘north and south.’ There are many rivers that flow north, including the Nile, which starts in the highlands of the tropics and flows downhill to the Mediterranean Sea. Remember the key to flow is the pull of gravity, not direction. And north is not ‘up’; otherwise, if I were to walk north, I would start on the floor and head toward the ceiling. That misconception occurs because we hang flat maps with north up, but we could just as easily hang them with north down, and it’s a reason that people in Pennsylvania might say, ‘down south’ and people in Alabama might say, ‘up north.’”
Her response, “I don’t care; that’s what my mother said.” Eristical Dialectic: pure and simple. The obstinate human mind.
Still worried about how the retrograde motion of Mercury will affect your life? It might not be logical, but it is certainly understandable given the role that the Eristical Dialectic plays in understanding (or misunderstanding) and communication.
* https://www.almanac.com/content/mercury-retrograde
**Shopenhauer, Arthur, The Essays of Arthur Shopenhauer: The Art of Controversy.” Trans. T. Bailey Saunders, 1896. Online at http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10731/pg10731-images.html
***In the first essay entitled “Preliminary: Logic and Dialectic.”
I thought Copernicus and Kepler had finally resolved the retrograde problem when they explained that the planets, the Wanderers, only seemed to move in “forward” and “backward” motions because of our changing perspective. Imagine cars racing around an elliptical (oval?) track. The drivers note the relative position of other cars from the perspectives of being on a smaller or larger ellipse, on the inside or outside path around the track. If a driver passes another, he sees that other car appear to move backwards, even though both vehicles move forward. Now imagine both cars on opposite sides of the track traveling at different speeds. The perspective would make cars appear to move sometimes backward and sometimes forward. That backward movement is called retrograde, and it was a big problem for those who observed a sky they believed revolved around a stationary Earth. Copernicus, and then Kepler, identified Earth and the other planets as those race cars, the paths of forward and backward motion their orbits. Mercury has the inside path and orbits the sun every 88 days; Earth is third out and has a 365.25-day run. Uranus, even farther out, makes its circuit at 30,688.5 Earth days. It’s easy for Mercury to lap Earth and even easier for Earth to lap distant Uranus.
Understanding retrograde planetary motions requires only rudimentary knowledge of Copernicus and Kepler. But hundreds of years of established facts mean little when people rely solely on their personal experience. Every generation has those who insist on reinventing the wheel, or, in this instance, the way planets wheel around the sky. With regard to understanding our physical world, we all begin in ignorance, regardless of what those a priori philosophers might tell us. And that initial ignorance is the way superstition and misinformation creep through history. So, is it a surprise that the current issue of The Old Farmer’s Almanac has advice on what to do when Mercury is in retrograde? The advice, such as “…before Mercury retrogrades, finish any tasks or projects at hand,” has no basis in anything other than ancient astrological beliefs.* Yet, there will be those in this generation—and in future generations—who will be concerned that the appearance of a race-track planet’s motion is an absolute, and not a relative, phenomenon and that retrograde motion has some control over human life.
Now, I know that if someone has never studied the centuries-old astrophysical knowledge of Copernicus and Kepler, there might be a tendency to understand the celestial objects from the limited perspective of personal experience. Of course, that experience, because we don’t feel Earth’s motion and don’t stand outside the Solar System, is essentially correct enough for daily living: It really doesn’t matter that on the way to the grocery store someone thinks that Mercury is running itself “backward.” The groceries will still be there; life will go on. It does matter, however, if one shapes tasks and attitudes by a distant and misunderstood planetary motion that was explained centuries ago.
That brings me to Shopenhauer’s essay on logic and dialectic. In “The Art of Controversy,” the philosopher distinguishes between the two, defining the former as “’the science of the laws of thought, that is, of the method of reason’” and the latter as “’the art of disputation.’”* Logic, according to Shopenhauer, is “the process of pure reason” that “should be capable of being constructed a priori. Dialectic, for the most part, can be constructed only a posteriori; that is to say, we may learn its rules by an experiential knowledge of the disturbance which pure thought suffers through the difference of individuality manifested in the intercourse between two rational beings....”***
Let’s belabor the point with regard to Dialectic. Shopenhauer continues:
…two rational beings, and also by acquaintance with the means which disputants adopt in order to make good against one another their own individual thought, and to show that it is pure and objective. For human nature is such that if A. and B. are engaged in thinking in common, and are communicating their opinions to one another on any subject, so long as it is not a mere fact of history, and A. perceives that B.’s thoughts on one and the same subject are not the same as his own, he does not begin by revising his own process of thinking, so as to discover any mistake which he may have made, but he assumes that the mistake has occurred in B.’s. In other words, man is naturally obstinate; and this quality in him is attended with certain results, treated of in the branch of knowledge which I should like to call Dialectic, but which, in order to avoid misunderstanding, I shall call Controversial or Eristical Dialectic. Accordingly, it is the branch of knowledge which treats of the obstinacy natural to man…Controversial Dialect is the art of disputing, and of disputing in such a way as to hold one’s own, whether one is in the right or wrong--per fas et nefas.
Ah! Per fas et nefas. Maybe you don’t know the Latin phrase, but you certainly have witnessed its manifestation in the numerous political and social arguments that stream daily across your smart phone, pad, or TV. It’s also manifest in the adherence to an ancient belief system that suggests some little rocky body called Mercury can influence your life simply because you see it from different perspectives throughout the year. Yes, right or wrong there will be those like the editors of The Old Farmer’s Almanac who will push millennia-old misunderstandings as truth by which one should live and govern the details of daily life. Yes, Mercury’s retrograde motion is in the minds of many a cause for concern—even though we know the proven race-track model of explanation offered long ago by Copernicus and Kepler.
Obstinate in your belief? Choosing Dialectic over Logic? Think personal experience is the ultimate guide to truth about the physical world? Choosing Dialectic over Logic in your daily intercourse with others?
Example: After explaining the geomorphology of streams to a freshman college geology class, I addressed the issue of flow direction. Streams flow downhill—though there’s an argument that the Mississippi flows slightly uphill through the sinking delta because of the push from the mass of water behind it, and another argument centered on the effects of tidal bores. Nevertheless, measurements and logic tell us that streams flow downhill just as shower water falls from the showerhead. So, I made the point that compass direction is irrelevant. Streams flow from higher ground to lower ground, from mountains to basins (both interior, as the Truckee River flows to landlocked Pyramid Lake in Nevada, and exterior, as most rivers ultimately empty into the ocean). Down a slope. That’s the important point. But after class a student approached me and said, “My mother told me that the Monongahela River flows backwards.” (Yes, like you, I tried to picture the front and back of water)
I said, “She probably means that the Monongahela trends toward the north, but that’s a common misconception based on the misunderstanding that makes synonyms of ‘up and down’ and ‘north and south.’ There are many rivers that flow north, including the Nile, which starts in the highlands of the tropics and flows downhill to the Mediterranean Sea. Remember the key to flow is the pull of gravity, not direction. And north is not ‘up’; otherwise, if I were to walk north, I would start on the floor and head toward the ceiling. That misconception occurs because we hang flat maps with north up, but we could just as easily hang them with north down, and it’s a reason that people in Pennsylvania might say, ‘down south’ and people in Alabama might say, ‘up north.’”
Her response, “I don’t care; that’s what my mother said.” Eristical Dialectic: pure and simple. The obstinate human mind.
Still worried about how the retrograde motion of Mercury will affect your life? It might not be logical, but it is certainly understandable given the role that the Eristical Dialectic plays in understanding (or misunderstanding) and communication.
* https://www.almanac.com/content/mercury-retrograde
**Shopenhauer, Arthur, The Essays of Arthur Shopenhauer: The Art of Controversy.” Trans. T. Bailey Saunders, 1896. Online at http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10731/pg10731-images.html
***In the first essay entitled “Preliminary: Logic and Dialectic.”
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