I’m not sure if this is justifiable or just an old-fashioned blunder...
On the subject of stars, all investigations which are not ultimately reducible to simple visual observations are…necessarily denied to us… We shall never be able by any means to study their chemical composition.
In the 1820s both John Herschel and William H. F. Talbot made systematic observations of salts using flame spectroscopy. In 1835, Charles Wheatstone reported that different metals could be easily distinguished by the different bright lines in the emission spectra of their sparks, thereby introducing an alternative mechanism to flame spectroscopy.
On the subject of stars, all investigations which are not ultimately reducible to simple visual observations are…necessarily denied to us… We shall never be able by any means to study their chemical composition.
Well, the first half seems approximately correct. The second sentence should have begun with “And by clever application of this means we shall...”.
It wasn’t until the 1850s that Ångström discovered that elements both emit and absorb light at characteristic wavelengths, which is what spectroscopic analysis of stars is based on, so I’m leaning toward justifiable.
I’m not sure if this is justifiable or just an old-fashioned blunder...
-- August Comte, 1835
I’m leaning towards “blunder” myself...
Yeah, blunder. Wikipedia says:
Well, the first half seems approximately correct. The second sentence should have begun with “And by clever application of this means we shall...”.
Even if you interpret “visual” as ‘mediated by photons’, there’s such a thing as neutrino astronomy.
It wasn’t until the 1850s that Ångström discovered that elements both emit and absorb light at characteristic wavelengths, which is what spectroscopic analysis of stars is based on, so I’m leaning toward justifiable.