Copy 1

The life of Sir Isaac Newton / By David Brewster.

  • David Brewster
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The life of Sir Isaac Newton / By David Brewster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    studies, placed him in a situation for pursuing them with new zeal. ‘The death of one of the canons enabled his uncle, who was Bishop of Ermeland, to appoint him to a canonry in the chapter of Frau- enberg, where, in a house situated on the brow of a mountain, he continued, in peaceful seclusion, to carry on his astronomical observations. During his residence at Rome his talents had been so well appreciated, that the Bishop of Fossombrona, who presided over the council for reforming the calendar, solicited the aid of Copernicus in this desirable un- dertaking. At first he entered warmly into the views of the council, and charged himself with the determination of the length of the year and of the month, and of the other motions of the sun and moon that seemed to be required ; but he found the task too irksome, and probably felt that it would interfere with those interesting discoveries which had already began to dawn upon his mind. Copernicus is said to have commenced his in- quiries by a historical examination of the opinions of ancient authors on the system of the universe ; but it is more likely that he sought for the autho- rity of their great names to countenance his pecu- har views, and that he was more desirous to pre- sent his own theory as one that he had received, rather than as one which he had invented. His mind had been long imbued with the idea, that sim- plicity and harmony should characterize the arrange- ments of the planetary system, and, in the complica- tion and disorder which reigned in the hypothesis of Ptolemy, he saw insuperable objections to its be- ing regarded as a representation of nature. In the opinions of the Egyptian sages, in those of Pytha-
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