Page:A short history of astronomy(1898).djvu/119

§ 54] definite by the aid of geometry, had been sufficiently developed to be capable of comparison with observation, rapid progress was made. The Greek astronomers of the scientific period, such as Aristarchus, Eratosthenes, and above all Hipparchus, appear moreover to have followed in their researches the method which has always been fruitful in physical science—namely, to frame provisional hypotheses, to deduce their mathematical consequences, and to compare these with the results of observation. There are few better illustrations of genuine scientific caution than the way in which Hipparchus, having tested the planetary theories handed down to him and having discovered their insufficiency, deliberately abstained from building up a new theory on data which he knew to be insufficient, and patiently collected fresh material, never to be used by himself, that some future astronomer might thereby be able to arrive at an improved theory.

Of positive additions to our astronomical knowledge made by the Greeks the most striking in some ways is the discovery of the approximately spherical form of the earth, a result which later work has only slightly modified. But their explanation of the chief motions of the solar system and their resolution of them into a comparatively small number of simpler motions was, in reality, a far more important contribution, though the Greek epicyclic scheme has been so remodelled, that at first sight it is difficult to recognise the relation between it and our modern views. The subsequent history will, however, show how completely each stage in the progress of astronomical science has depended on those that preceded.

When we study the great conflict in the time of Coppernicus between the ancient and modern ideas, our sympathies naturally go out towards those who supported the latter, which are now known to be more accurate, and we are apt to forget that those who then spoke in the name of the ancient astronomy and quoted Ptolemy were indeed believers in the doctrines which they had derived from the Greeks, but that their methods of thought, their frequent refusal to face facts, and their appeals to authority, were all entirely foreign to the spirit of the great men whose disciples they believed themselves to be.