Contents -- Preface -- 1. One Question and Two Ironies -- 2. Positions, Orbits and Calculations -- 2.1 Looking at the sky -- 2.2 Making maps -- 2.3 Kepler's orbits -- 2.4 Distances -- 2.5 Calculations -- 2.5.1 Conservation laws -- 2.6 Stability -- 3. Sir John Herschel, Treatise on Astronomy, 1833 -- 3.1 The purpose and the readership -- 3.2 Content -- 3.3 Themes -- 3.4 Hindsight -- 3.4.1 Tentative results and weak support -- 3.4.2 Good insights -- 3.5 Wrong answers -- 3.5.1 Gravitational dynamics -- 3.5.1.1 Stability calculations -- 3.6 Summary and lessons learned -- 4. Sir George Biddell Airy, Popular Astronomy, 1848 -- 4.1 Form and purpose -- 4.1.1 The audience and the object -- 4.1.2 Two themes -- 4.2 Content and results -- 4.3 The Astronomer Royal mistaken -- 4.4 Summary -- 5. Heat, Light and Three Bodies -- 5.1 Waves and particles -- 5.2 Electromagnetism -- 5.3 Thermodynamics -- 5.4 Atoms and molecules -- 5.5 Spectra -- 5.6 On probability and statistics, and keeping track of things -- 5.7 More orbits, plus squares and cubes -- 6. Sir John Herschel, Outlines of Astronomy, Tenth Edition, 1869 -- 6.1 The new edition -- 6.1.1 Audience and method -- 6.1.2 Content and themes -- 6.2 Old problems -- 6.3 New results -- 6.3.1 The rings of Saturn -- 6.3.2 Stellar parallax -- 6.3.3 Thermodynamics and spectra -- 6.4 New problems -- 6.4.1 Observations -- 6.4.1.1 The nature of nebulae -- 6.4.1.2 Others' observations, and Herschel's own -- 6.5 Summary -- 7. Simon Newcomb, Popular Astronomy, 1878 -- 7.1 Audience and method -- 7.2 Themes and content -- 7.2.1 Progress and development -- 7.2.2 Content -- 7.3 Old problems -- 7.3.1 Saturn, craters and clouds -- 7.3.2 Nebulae and stability -- 7.3.3 Visual observations -- 7.4 Progress and insights -- 7.4.1 Spectroscopy and thermodynamics -- 7.4.2 Some insights -- 7.5 New problems.

7.5.1 The Moon, Algol and some planets -- 7.5.2 The Sun -- 7.5.3 The structure of the universe -- 7.6 Summary -- 8. Sir Robert S. Ball, In the High Heavens, 1893 -- 8.1 Form, purpose and readership -- 8.1.1 Themes -- 8.2 Logic and consistency -- 8.3 Cooling planets and dark stars -- 8.4 Prerequisites for the course -- 8.4.1 Probability -- 8.4.2 Orbital mechanics -- 8.5 Summary -- 8.5.1 Lessons -- 9. Simon Newcomb, Astronomy for Everybody, 1902 -- 9.1 The new book -- 9.1.1 Motivation and audience -- 9.1.2 Content -- 9.1.3 Summary of the new book -- 9.2 Old, familiar problems -- 9.2.1 Nebulae, the Moon and Algol -- 9.2.2 Cooling and contracting -- 9.3 Insights and progress -- 9.4 Summary -- 10. Things Get Strange: Quanta and Relativity -- 10.1 Relativity -- 10.1.1 Special Relativity -- 10.1.2 General Relativity -- 10.2 Quantum Mechanics -- 10.2.1 Some nuclear physics -- 10.2.2 The Old Quantum Theory -- 10.2.2.1 Waves to particles: blackbody radiation -- 10.2.2.2 Particles to waves: the Bohr atom -- 10.2.3 The New Quantum Theory -- 10.3 Observations of stars -- 10.4 The Milky Way and the nature of the nebulae -- 11. Sir James Jeans, The Universe Around Us, First Edition, 1929 -- 11.1 Audience, aim and content -- 11.1.1 The Jeans picture -- 11.2 Hindsight and Sir James Jeans -- 11.2.1 Jeans and theory -- 11.2.1.1 The stability of gaseous stars -- 11.2.1.2 Relaxation and the equipartition of energy -- 11.2.1.3 Atomic theory -- 11.2.2 Jeans and observations -- 11.2.2.1 Agreement: exact, rough and very rough -- 11.2.2.2 False and falsifiable -- 11.2.3 Jeans and logic -- 11.2.3.1 Adjustables and independence -- 11.2.3.2 Inconsistency and unfairness -- 11.2.4 Jeans and certainty -- 11.2.5 Clues for the layman -- 11.3 The rehabilitation of Sir James Jeans -- 11.4 Summary and lessons -- 12. Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, Stars and Atoms, Third Impression, 1928.

12.1 Motivation, audience and approach -- 12.2 Content and themes -- 12.3 Hindsight and Sir A. S. Eddington -- 12.3.1 Caution and ba ement -- 12.3.2 Problems -- 12.4 Summary -- 13. Sir James Jeans, The Universe Around Us, Fourth Edition, 1944 -- 13.1 The new edition -- 13.2 The picture changes -- 13.2.1 Changes in background physics -- 13.2.2 Abandoning liquid stars -- 13.2.3 Certainty and uncertainty -- 13.3 Remaining problems -- 13.3.1 Carving-out problems -- 13.3.2 The Solar System -- 13.3.3 Jeans and reasoning -- 13.4 Summary of the fourth edition -- 14. In Summary: Reading the Astronomers, 1833-1944 -- 14.1 The character of science -- 14.1.1 Exploratory science -- 14.1.2 Dialectic science -- 14.2 Rules for the layman -- 14.3 Applying the rules -- 14.4 Nowadays -- 14.5 The usefulness of wrong answers -- Acknowledgments -- Bibliography -- Index.