Grand Phases on the Sun

It was one more defeat in our long and losing battle to keep the Sun perfect, or, if not perfect, constant,
and if inconstant, regular. Why we think the Sun should be any of these when other stars are not is
more a question for social than for physical science.
John A. (Jack) Eddy
Delineator of the Maunder Minimum
On the human Ide fi xe as to why the Sun must be seen energetically as a linear entity.
Around 1904, Kapteyn noticed that the stars did not move randomly through space, but that their
movements had preferential directions... there was regularity in something astronomers had always
thought to be chaotic.
Adriaan Blaauw, emeritus director of the Kapteyn Institute, Groningen, Netherlands
On Jacob Cornelius Kapteyns discovery of star streaming: the concept of galactic rotation and so, proof
of some regularity in stellar behavior.