Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/70

64 true, as it puts in evidence more true relations. In the light of this new principle, let us examine the question which occupies us.

No, there is no absolute space; these two contradictory propositions: 'The earth turns round' and 'The earth does not turn round' are, therefore, neither of them more true than the other. To affirm one while denying the other, in the kinematic sense, would be to admit the existence of absolute space.

But if the one reveals true relations that the other hides from us, we can nevertheless regard it as physically more true than the other, since it has a richer content. Now in this regard no doubt is possible.

Behold the apparent diurnal motion of the stars, and the diurnal motion of the other heavenly bodies, and besides, the flattening of the earth, the rotation of Foucault's pendulum, the gyration of cyclones, the trade-winds, what not else? For the Ptolemaist all these phenomena have no bond between them; for the Copernican they are produced by the one same cause. In saying, the earth turns round, I affirm that all these phenomena have an intimate relation, and that is true, and that remains true, although there is not and can not be absolute space.

So much for the rotation of the earth upon itself; what shall we say of its revolution around the sun? Here again, we have three phenomena which for the Ptolemaist are absolutely independent and which for the Copernican are referred back to the same origin; they are the apparent displacements of the planets on the celestial sphere, the aberration of the fixed stars, the parallax of these same stars. Is it by chance that all the planets admit an inequality whose period is a year, and that this period is precisely equal to that of aberration, precisely equal besides to that of parallax? To adopt Ptolemy's system is to answer, yes; to adopt that of Copernicus is to answer, no; this is to affirm that there is a bond between the three phenomena and that also is true although there is no absolute space.

In Ptolemy's system, the motions of the heavenly bodies can not be explained by the action of central forces, celestial mechanics is impossible. The intimate relations that celestial mechanics reveals to us between all the celestial phenomena are true relations; to affirm the immobility of the earth would be to deny these relations, that would be to fool ourselves.

The truth for which Galileo suffered remains, therefore, the truth, although it has not altogether the same meaning as for the vulgar, and its true meaning is much more subtle, more profound and more rich.

Not against M. LeRoy do I wish to defend science for its own sake; may be this is what he condemns, but this is what he cultivates, since