Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/491

Rh that the orbits of the planets were not circular, as would seem to be required by his hypothesis, but elliptical, the sun being at one of the foci; also, the ever-varying radius vector always passed over equal spaces in equal times, hence the motion of the planet in its orbit was not uniform, as his hypothesis would require, but ever-varying; and this variation too was evidently not fortuitous or uncertain but increased or diminished in the exact ratio to the varying distance of the planet from the sun required by the law just mentioned, of equal spaces in equal times. These facts, apparently so inconsistent with his hypothesis, Kepler accounted for by supposing that each of the planets was animated by an intelligent spirit, by whose agency the motion of the planet was, in part at least, determined. We have seen an allusion to this theory in the quotation above given, on the subject of gravity. He regarded each of the heavenly bodies, and the earth as one of them, as literally a huge animal, and in one of his works describes with some minuteness the habits of that particular animal on whose body it is our lot to live.

Kepler's hypothesis of an emanation from the sun of a corporeal nature by whose revolution the planets were propelled in their orbits was received with more or less favor for a time, but was soon superseded by another memorable hypothesis no more reasonable or plausible and yet from the time of its announcement until the publication of 'The Principia' demonstrated its fallacy, it was adopted by most men of science and may be said to have been the accepted theory on the subject. We refer to the Vortices of Descartes. This distinguished philosopher, born 1596, rose to eminence about the time of Kepler's death, which occurred in 1630. By the force of his genius, illustrated not only by that achievement for which his name will ever be held in honored remembrance—the invention of analytical geometry—but by the abundance and ability of his labors in every department of science and philosophy, Descartes, for more than half a century, occupied a position in the learned world scarcely inferior to that which for ages preceding had been held by Aristotle.

As to the cause of planetary motion, Descartes assumed the existence, throughout the limits of our system, of a subtle transparent fluid in ceaseless revolution about the sun as its center, and that the planets floated in this fluid and were consequently carried round by the sun in its motion, just as in a whirlpool a cork or floating body is carried round by the motion of the water. To account for the difference in the times of revolution of different planets, he supposed that the velocity of the revolution of the fluid, at different distances from the sun was different. To account for the revolution of the satellites of the planets, he assumed that in the nighborhoodneighborhood [sic] of each planet this fluid revolved about the planet as a center. To this purely fanciful