It is supposed that in the very dawn of science, Pythagoras or his
disciples explained the apparent motion of the heavenly bodies about
the earth by the diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis. But this
theory, though bearing so deeply impressed upon it the great seal of
truth, _simplicity_, was in such glaring contrast with the evidence of
the senses, that it failed of acceptance in antiquity or the middle
ages. It found no favor with minds like those of Aristotle, Archimedes,
Hipparchus, Ptolemy, or any of the acute and learned Arabian or mediæval
astronomers. All their ingenuity and all their mathematical skill were
exhausted in the development of a wonderfully complicated and ingenious,
but erroneous history. The great master truth, rejected for its
simplicity, lay disregarded at their feet.
At the second dawn of science, the great fact again beamed into the mind
of Copernicus. Now, at least, in that glorious age which witnessed the
invention of printing, the great mechanical engine of intellectual
progress, and the discovery of America, we may expect that this
long-hidden revelation, a second time proclaimed, will command the
assent of mankind. But the sensible phenomena were still too strong
for the theory; the glorious delusion of the rising and the setting
sun could not be overcome. Tycho de Brahe furnished his Observatory
with instruments superior in number and quality to all that had been
collected before; but the great instrument of discovery, which, by
augmenting the optic power of the eye, enables it to penetrate beyond
the apparent phenomena, and to discern the true constitution of the
heavenly bodies, was wanting at Uranienburg. The observations of Tycho
as discussed by Kepler, conducted that most fervid, powerful, and
sagacious mind to the discovery of some of the most important laws of
the celestial motions; but it was not till Galileo, at Florence, had
pointed his telescope to the sky, that the Copernican system could be
said to be firmly established in the scientific world.