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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    goras, Philolaus, Aristarchus, and Nicetas, he re- cognized his own earliest conviction that the earth was not the centre of the universe ; but he appears to have considered it as still possible that our globe might perform some function in the system more important than that of the other planets ; and his attention was much occupied with the speculation of Martianus Capella, who placed the sun between Mars and the Moon, and made Mercury and Venus revolve round him as a centre; and with the sys- tem of Apollonius Pergzeus, who made all the pla- nets revolve round the sun, while the sun and moon were carried round the earth in the centre of the universe. The examination, however, of these hy- potheses gradually dispelled the difficulties with which the subject was beset, and after the labours of more than thirty years, he was permitted to see the true system of the heavens. The sun he con- sidered as immoveable in the centre of the system, while the earth revolved between the orbits of Ve- nus and Mars, and produced by its rotation about its axis all the diurnal phenomena of the celestial sphere. ‘The precession of the equinoxes was thus referred to a sight motion of the earth’s axis, and the stations and retrogradations of the planets were the necessary consequence of their own motions combined with that of the earth about the sun. These remarkable views were supported by nume- rous astronomical observations; and in 1530, Co- pernicus brought to a close his immortal work on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies. But while we admire the genius which triumph- ed over so many difficulties, we cannot fail to com- mend the extraordinary prudence with which he ush-
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