Page:A short history of astronomy(1898).djvu/136

CHAPTER IV.

 

COPPERNICUS.

 

"But in this our age, one rare witte (seeing the continuall errors that from time to time more and more continually have been discovered, besides the infinite absurdities in their Theoricks, which they have been forced to admit that would not confesse any Mobilitie in the ball of the Earth) hath by long studye, paynfull practise, and rare invention delivered a new Theorick or Model of the world, shewing that the Earth resteth not in the Center of the whole world or globe of elements, which encircled and enclosed in the Moone's orbit, and together with the whole globe of mortality is carried yearly round about the Sunne, which like a king in the middest of all, rayneth and giveth laws of motion to all the rest, sphaerically dispersing his glorious beames of light through all this sacred coelestiall Temple."

Thomas Digges, 1590.

70. The growing interest in astronomy shewn by the work of such men as Regiomontanus was one of the early results in the region of science of the great movement of thought to different aspects of which are given the names of Revival of Learning, Renaissance, and Reformation. The movement may be regarded primarily as a general quickening of intelligence and of interest in matters of thought and knowledge. The invention of printing early in the 15th century, the stimulus to the study of the Greek authors, due in part to the scholars who were driven westwards after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453), and the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, all helped on a movement the beginning of which has to be looked for much earlier.

Every stimulus to the intelligence naturally brings with it a tendency towards inquiry into opinions received through tradition and based on some great authority. The effective

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