Page:The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe.djvu/81

 interest in Galileo's discoveries, harked back to the time-honored objections. At first mild in his opposition, he later became emphatically opposed to it. In the Advancement of Learning (1604), he speaks of it as a possible explanation of the celestial phenomena according to astronomy but as contrary to natural philosophy. Some fifteen years later in the Novum Organon he asserts that the assumption of the earth's movement cannot be allowed; for, as he says in his Thema Coeli, at that time he considered the opinion that the earth is stationary the truer one. Finally, in his De Augmentis Scientiarum (1622-1623) he speaks of the old notions of the solidity of the heavens, etc., and adds, "It is the absurdity of these opinions that has driven men to the diurnal motion; which I am convinced is most false." He gives his reasons in the Descriptio Globi Intellectualis (ch. 5-6): "In favor of the earth [as the center of the world] we have the evidence of our sight, and an inveterate opinion; and most of all this, that as dense bodies are contracted into a narrow compass, and rare bodies are widely diffused (and the area of every circle is contracted to the center) it seems to follow almost of necessity that the narrow space about the middle of the world be set down as the proper and peculiar place for dense bodies." The sun's claims to such a situation are satisfied through having two satellites of its own, Venus and Mercury. Copernicus's scheme is inconvenient; it overloads the earth with a triple motion; it creates a difficulty by separating the sun from the number of the planets with which it has much in common; and the "introduction of so much immobility into nature … and making the moon revolve around the earth in an epicycle, and some other assumptions of his are the speculations of one who cares not what fictions he introduces into nature, provided his calculations answer." The total absence of all reference to the Scriptures is the unique and refreshing part of Bacon's thought.

All the more common arguments against the diurnal rotation of the earth are well stated in an interesting little letter (1619)

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