seven colors, seven planets, seven n

[White, Rich]

Actually it was Hegel who proved there were only 5 planets....Kepler was 
quite enamoured of the platonic solid correspondence of the orbital radii. 
 see Neugebauer (i think) The Exact Sciences in Antiquity and a couple other 
books I don't have handy at the moment.
Also worth a glance is Hamlet's Mill by Giorgio di Santayana and Herta von 
Dechend for mythological interpretation based on astronomical models - quite 
an astonishing book in my opinion.
 ----------
.*++From: owner-pynchon-l
.*++To: CO27447; SY19058
.*++Subject: seven colors, seven planets, seven notes, septive?
.*++Date: Wednesday, May 08, 1996 7:24PM
.*++
.*++<<File Attachment: HEADERS.TXT>>
.*++
.*++
.*++If Newton did want corrospondance between the notes of the scale and
.*++the colors, and from Malcolm Saunders' comments, it sounds like he did,
.*++then it seems to me he was trying to force to a somewhat arbitrary
.*++scheme, since there are eight notes in an octive.  Otherwise, of course,
.*++it would be a septive, right?  The note we all forget in these evenly
.*++tempered times would be the flatted seventh, which, in the key of C,
.*++those retentive Germans occasionally refered to as H, at least through 
the
.*++time of Beethoven.   It shows up all the time in pop music, in dominant
.*++seventh chords just before the resolution to the tonic (some sort of 
short
.*++story in that theme...) and corrosponds to the 14th overtone in the
.*++harmonic series, where the eighth through the fifteenth overtones make 
up
.*++the notes of the octave.  I can't recall when the harmonic scale was
.*++abandoned for the 12 note tempered scale, but for some reason, I thought
.*++it was after Newton.
.*++
.*++Which just goes to show that scientists are just as prone to 
ritualization
.*++and fetishism as anyone else.  I believe it was Kepler who "proved" that 

.*++there where only five planents, because there were only 5 perfect
.*++solids, which fit the known planitary orbits....
.*++
.*++Brian McCary
.*++
.*++