In consequence of the ancient doctrine of the plurality of worlds,
Phavorinus remarkably conjectured the possibility of the existence of
other planets, besides those known to us. “He was astonished how it came
to be admitted as certain, that there were no other _wandering_ stars,
or planets, but those observed by the Chaldeans. As for his part, he
thought that their number was more considerable than was vulgarly given
out, though they had hitherto escaped our notice.” Here he probably
alludes to the satellites, which have since been manifested by means of
the telescope; but it required singular penetration to be capable of
forming the supposition, and of having, as it were, predicted this
discovery. Seneca mentions a similar notion of Democritus; who supposed,
that there were many more of them, than had yet come within our view.
However unfounded may be the system of vortices promulgated by
Descartes, yet, as there is much of genius and fancy in it, the notion
obtained great applause, and ranks among those theories which do honour
to the moderns, or rather to the ancients, from whom it seems to have
been drawn, notwithstanding its apparent novelty. In fact, Leucippus
taught, and after him Democritus, that “the celestial bodies derived
their formation and motion from an infinite number of atoms, of every
sort of figure; which encountering one another, and clinging together,
threw themselves into vortices; which being thoroughly agitated and
circumvolved on all sides, the most subtile of those particles that went
to the composition of the whole mass, made towards the utmost skirts of
the circumferences of those vortices; whilst the less subtile, or those
of a coarser element, subsided towards the centre, forming themselves
into those spherical concretions, which compose the planets, the earth,
and the sun.” They said, that “those vortices were actuated by the
rapidity of a fluid matter, having the earth at the centre of it; and
that the planets were moved, each of them, with more or less violence,
in proportion to their respective distance from that centre.” They
affirmed also, that the celerity with which those vortices moved, was
occasionally the cause of their carrying off one another; the most
powerful and rapid attracting, and drawing into itself, whatever was
less so, whether planet or whatever else.
Leucippus seems also to have known that grand principle of Descartes,
that “all revolving bodies endeavour to withdraw from their centre, and
fly off in a tangent.”
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