Page:The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe.djvu/85

 decree. The professor re-opened the matter with a similar thesis in July, thereby arousing a second controversy that this time reached even the Privy Council. Once more he submitted, but solely with an apology for having caused a disagreement. His new theses in 1695 contained no explicit mention of the Copernician system; at least he had learned tact.

The absorption of the German states in the Thirty Years War may account for the apparent absence there of Copernican discussion until after the Peace of Westphalia. A certain Georgius Ludovicus Agricola gave a syllogistic refutation of the doctrine as his disputation at the university of Wittenberg in 1665. While he acknowledged its ingenuity, he preferred to it "the noblest, truest, and divinely inspired system" of Tycho Brahe. The four requirements of an acceptable astronomical hypothesis according to this student are: (1) That it suit all the observations of all the ages; (2) That as far as possible, it be simple and clear; (3) That it be not contrary to the principles of physics and optics; (4) That it be not contrary to the Holy Scriptures. As the Copernican theory does not meet all these tests, it is unsatisfactory. Incidentally, he considers it "ridiculous to include the earth among the planets, because then we would be living in Heaven, forsooth, since we would be in a star." He decides finally "that the decree of March, 1616, condemning the Copernican opinion was not unjust, nor was Galileo unfairly treated."

Two years later appeared a text-book at Nürnberg, by a Jesuit father, based on the twelfth century Sacrobosco treatise and without a single reference so far as I could find, to Copernicus! Another publication of the same year was a good deal more up to date. This was a kind of catechism in German by Johann-Henrich Voight explaining for the common people various scientific and mathematical problems in a hundred questions and answers. He himself, a Royal Swedish astronomer, obviously preferred the Tychonic system, but he left his reader

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