The Credentials Of Science The Warrant Of Faith

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The publisher of this book utilises modern printing technologies as well as photocopying processes for reprinting and preserving rare works of literature that are out-of-print or on the verge of becoming lost. This book is one such reprint. Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TYCHO BRAHE. 59 LECTURE III. THE INDUCTION OF NEWTON. DURING the fifty years that followed the death of Copernicus, preparations were being made for another great advance in the theory of astronomy. These preparations consisted chiefly in the extension of observations, the calculation of tables, the improvement of methods,- all resulting in the collection of fuller and more accurate data in regard to the motions of the heavenly bodies. A very skilful observer appeared, the accuracy of whose measurements exceeded anything that had yet been obtained. Copernicus had declared to a pupil, who was disturbed about single minutes, that " if he could be sure to ten minutes of space, he should be as much delighted as Pythagoras was when he discovered the property of the right-angled triangle; " but it was claimed for Tycho Brahe that an error of eight minutes in his observations was impossible. In the last year of his life at Prague Tycho received into his observatory, as an assistant, a young man named Johann Kepler, who with these eight minutes, to use his own boastful words, was able to reconstruct the whole of astronomy. There could not be a greater contrast than that between Copernicus60 KEPLER. and Kepler, - the one, the ideal philosopher; the other, a veritable astronomical Don Quixote, turning what he must have known to have been a dishonest penny by astrology in his youth, and in his mature manhood discussing like a Lothario the qualifications of eleven different damsels to become his second wife. There never was a wilder imagination than that of Kepler, and he gave it full rein. The wisest of men have doubtless at times idle fancies; but then they have the wisdom to keep their folly to themselves, or at least to their homes. Kepler, on the other hand, seems to have ...

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