Left Radicalism and the Milky Way: Connecting the Scientific and Socialist Virtues of Anton Pannekoek
📝 Abstract
Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960) was both an influential Marxist and an innovative astronomer. This paper will analyse the various innovative methods that he developed to represent the visual aspect of the Milky Way and the statistical distribution of stars in the galaxy through a framework of epistemic virtues. Doing so will not emphasize the unique aspects of his astronomical research, but also reveal its connections to his left radical brand of Marxism. A crucial feature of Pannekoek’s astronomical method was the active role ascribed to astronomers. They were expected to use their intuitive ability to organize data according to the appearance of the Milky Way, while at the same time they had to avoid the influence of personal experience and theoretical presuppositions about the shape of the system. With this method, he produced results that went against the Kapteyn Universe and instead made him the first astronomer in the Netherlands to find supporting evidence for Harlow Shapley’s extended galaxy. After exploring Pannekoek’s Marxist philosophy, it is argued that both his astronomical method and his interpretation of historical materialism can be seen as strategies developed to make optical use of his particular conception of the human mind.
💡 Analysis
Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960) was both an influential Marxist and an innovative astronomer. This paper will analyse the various innovative methods that he developed to represent the visual aspect of the Milky Way and the statistical distribution of stars in the galaxy through a framework of epistemic virtues. Doing so will not emphasize the unique aspects of his astronomical research, but also reveal its connections to his left radical brand of Marxism. A crucial feature of Pannekoek’s astronomical method was the active role ascribed to astronomers. They were expected to use their intuitive ability to organize data according to the appearance of the Milky Way, while at the same time they had to avoid the influence of personal experience and theoretical presuppositions about the shape of the system. With this method, he produced results that went against the Kapteyn Universe and instead made him the first astronomer in the Netherlands to find supporting evidence for Harlow Shapley’s extended galaxy. After exploring Pannekoek’s Marxist philosophy, it is argued that both his astronomical method and his interpretation of historical materialism can be seen as strategies developed to make optical use of his particular conception of the human mind.
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CHAOKANG TAI* Left Radicalism and the Milky Way: Connecting the Scientific and Socialist Virtues of Anton Pannekoek ABSTRACT Anton Pannekoek (1873–60) was both an influential Marxist and an innovative astronomer. This paper will analyze the various innovative methods that he developed to represent the visual aspect of the Milky Way and the statistical distribution of stars in the galaxy through a framework of epistemic virtues. Doing so will not only emphasize the unique aspects of his astronomical research, but also reveal its connections to his left radical brand of Marxism. A crucial feature of Pannekoek’s astronomical method was the active role ascribed to astronomers. They were expected to use their intuitive ability to organize data according to the appearance of the Milky Way, even as they had to avoid the influence of personal experience and theoretical presuppositions about the shape of the system. With this method, Pannekoek produced results that went against the Kapteyn Universe and instead made him the first astronomer in the Netherlands to find supporting evidence for Harlow Shapley’s extended galaxy. After exploring Pannekoek’s Marxist philosophy, it is argued that both his astronomical method and his interpretation of historical materialism can be seen as strategies developed to make optical use of his particular conception of the human mind. *Institute for Theoretical Physics Amsterdam, Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, and Vossius Center for History of Humanities and Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, PO Box 94485, 1090 GL Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, Utrecht University, the Netherlands; cktai@uva.nl The following abbreviations are used: API, Archive of the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam; ApJ, Astrophysical Journal; BAN, Bulletin of the Astronomical Institutes of the Netherlands; HSPBS, Historical Studies of the Physical and Bio- logical Sciences; JHA, Journal for the History of Astronomy; Legacy, Piet C. van der Kruit and Klaas van Berkel (eds.), The Legacy of J.C. Kapteyn: Studies on Kapteyn and the Development of Modern Astronomy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2000); MNRAS, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astro- nomical Society; PASP, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific; PKAW, Proceedings of the Section of Sciences, Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam; PUA, Pub- lications of the Astronomical Institute of the University of Amsterdam; VS, Victorian Studies; WdS, Leiden Observatory Archives, directorate Willem de Sitter, Leiden University Library, Leiden. 2 0 0 | Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Vol. 47, Number 2, pps. 200–254. ISSN 1939-1811, electronic ISSN 1939-182X. © 2017 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www. ucpress.edu/journals.php?p¼reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2017.47.2.200 . KEY WORDS: Anton Pannekoek, epistemic virtues, scientific persona, statistical astronomy, Milky Way appearance, historical materialism, left radicalism, Jacobus Kapteyn When Harvard University celebrated its tercentenary in 1936, it conveyed honorary degrees to 39 distinguished international scholars. Among the re- cipients was Dutch astronomer Anton Pannekoek (1873–1960), who was honored for his ‘‘contributions of high merit in many fields of astronomy.’’1 Among other things, Pannekoek determined the distances to several Milky Way clouds, providing early evidence of the eccentric position of the Solar System in our galaxy; computed the first curve of growth for a star other than the Sun; and produced accurate drawings of the Milky Way, which the Carl Zeiss company in Jena would feature in their planetariums for decades.2 There was also a very different side to Pannekoek, however. Prior to attend- ing the tercentenary conference, he addressed the members of the Workers’ Socialist Party of the United States, a small but active left communist move- ment in Boston.3 Their members, who turned out in large numbers for the meeting, had a very different reason to be interested in Pannekoek. They knew him as former party theoretician of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), the largest socialist party of its time, and as one of the current theoretical leaders of the council communist movement, which they supported. Throughout history, few people have managed to be as influential as Pan- nekoek in such widely different fields as Marxism and astronomy. The fact that he managed to contribute significantly to both fields makes him a compelling case study for the history of science. Previous research on the interaction between Marxism and science has often focused either on how Soviet scientists interacted with sta
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