The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe/Part 2/Chapter 4

by Dorothy Stimson

 

CHAPTER IV.

The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican System

JUST as Tycho Brahe's system proved to be for some a good half-way station between the improbable Ptolemaic and the heretical Copernican system;^[1] so the Cartesian philosophy helped others to reconcile their scientific knowledge with their reverence for the Scriptures, until Newton's work had more fully demonstrated the scientific truth.

Its originator, Réné Descartes^[2] (1596-1650) was in Holland when word of Galileo's condemnation reached him in 1633, as he was seeking in the bookshops of Amsterdam and Leyden for a copy of the Dialogo.^[3] He at once became alarmed lest he too be accused of trying to establish the movement of the earth, a doctrine which he had understood was then publicly taught even in Rome, and which he had made the basis of his own philosophy. If this doctrine were condemned as false, then his philosophy must be also; and, true to his training by the Jesuits, rather than go against the Church he would not publish his books. He set aside his Cosmos, and delayed the publication of the Méthode for some years in consequence, even starting to translate it into Latin as a safeguard.^[4] His conception of the universe, the Copernican one modified to meet the requirements of a literally interpreted Bible, was not printed until 1644, when it appeared in his Principes.^[5]

According to this statement which he made only as a possible explanation of the phenomena and not as an absolute truth, while there was little to choose between the Tychonic and the Copernican conceptions, he inclined slightly toward the former. He conceived of the earth and the other planets as each borne along in its enveloping heaven like a ship by the tide, or like a man asleep on a ship that was sailing from Calais to Dover. The earth itself does not move, but it is transported so that its position is changed in relation to the other planets but not visibly so in relation to the fixed stars because of the vast intervening spaces. The laws of the universe affect even the most minute particle, and all alike are swept along in a series of vortices, or whirlpools, of greater or less size. Thus the whole planetary system sweeps around the sun in one great vortex, as the satellites sweep around their respective planets in lesser ones. In this way Descartes worked out a mechanical explanation of the universe of considerable importance because it was a rational one which anyone could understand. Its defects were many, to be sure, as for example, that it did not allow for the elliptical orbits of the planets;^[6] and one critic has claimed that this theory of a motionless earth borne along by an enveloping heaven was comparable to a worm in a Dutch cheese sent from Amsterdam to Batavia,—the worm has travelled about 6000 leagues but without changing its place!^[7] But this theory fulfilled Descartes's aim: to show that the universe was governed by mechanical laws of which we can be absolutely certain and that Galileo's discoveries simply indicated this.^[8]

This exposition of the Copernican doctrine strongly appealed to the literary world of the 17th and 18th centuries in western Europe, especially in the Netherlands, in the Paris salons and in the universities.^[9] M. Monchamp cites a number of contemporary comments upon its spread, in one of which it is claimed that in 1691, the university of Louvain had for the preceding forty years been practically composed of Cartesians.^[10] For the time being, this theory was a more or less satisfactory explanation of the universe according to known laws; it answered to Galileo's observations; it was in harmony with the Scriptures, and its vortices paved the way for the popular acceptance of Newton's law of universal gravitation.

Protestant England was of course little disturbed by the decree against the Copernican doctrine, a fact that makes it possible, perhaps, to see there more clearly the change in people's attitude from antagonism to acceptance, than in Catholic Europe where fear of the Church's power, and respect for its decisions inhibited honest public expression of thought and conviction. While in England also the literal interpretation of the Scriptures continued to be with the common people a strong objection against the doctrine, the rationalist movement of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries along with Newton's great work, helped win acceptance for it among the better educated classes.

Bruno had failed to win over his English hearers, and in 1600 when the De Magnete was published, William Gilbert, (1540-1603) was apparently the only supporter of the earth's movement then in England,^[11] and he advocated the diurnal motion only.^[12] Not many, however, were as outspoken as Bacon in denunciation of the system; they were simply somewhat ironically indifferent. An exception to this was Dean Wren of Windsor (father of the famous architect). He could not speak strongly enough against it in his marginal notes on Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica. As Dr. Johnson wrote,^[13] Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) himself in his zeal for the old errors, did not easily admit new positions, for he never mentioned the motion of the earth but with contempt and ridicule. This was not enough for the Dean, who wrote in the margin of Browne's book, at such a passage,^[14] that there were "eighty-odd expresse places in the Bible affirming in plaine and overt terms the naturall and perpetuall motion of sun and moon" and that "a man should be affirighted to follow that audacious and pernicious suggestion which Satan used, and thereby undid us all in our first parents, that God hath a double meaning in his commands, in effect condemning God of amphibologye. And all this boldness and overweaning having no other ground but a seeming argument of some phenomena forsooth, which notwithstanding we know the learned Tycho, prince of astronomers, who lived fifty-two years since Copernicus, hath by admirable and matchlesse instruments and many yeares exact observations proved to bee noe better than a dreame."

Richard Burton (1576-1639) in The Anatomy of Melancholy speaks of the doctrine as a "prodigious tenent, or paradox," lately revive by "Copernicus, Brunus and some others," and calls Copernicus in consequence the successor of Atlas.^[15] The vast extent of the heavens that this supposition requires, he considers "quite opposite to reason, to natural philosophy, and all out as absurd as disproportional, (so some will) as prodigious, as that of the sun's swift motion of the heavens." If the earth is a planet, then other planets may be inhabited (as Christian Huygens argued later on); and this involves a possible plurality of worlds. Burton laughs at those who, to avoid the Church attitude and yet explain the celestial phenomena, invent new hypotheses and new systems of the world, "correcting others, doing worse themselves, reforming some and marring all," as he says of Roeslin's endeavors. "In the meantime the world is tossed in a blanket amongst them; they hoyse the earth up and down like a ball, make it stand and goe at their pleasure."^[16] He himself was indifferent.

Others more sensitive to the implications of this system, might exclaim with George Herbert (1593-1633):^[17]

"Although there were some fourtie heav'ns, or more,
Sometimes I peere above them all;
Sometimes I hardly reach a score,
Sometimes to hell I fall.

"O rack me not to such a vast extent,
Those distances belong to thee.
The world's too little for thy tent,
A grave too big for me."

Or they might waver, undecided, like Milton who had the archangel answer Adam's questions thus:^[18]

"But whether thus these things, or whether not,
Whether the Sun predominant in Heaven
Rise on the Earth, or Earth rise on the Sun,
Hee from the East his flaming robe begin,
Or Shee from West her silent course advance
With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps
On her soft axle, while she paces ev'n
And bears thee soft with the smooth Air along,
Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid,
Leave them to God above, him serve and feare;
Of other Creatures, as him pleases best,
Wherever plac't, let him dispose; joy thou
In what he gives to thee, this Paradise
And the fair Eve: Heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there: be lowlie wise." (1667)

Whewell thinks^[19] that at this time the diffusion of the Copernican system was due more to the writings of Bishop Wilkins than to those of any one else, for their very extravagances drew stronger attention to it. The first, "The Discovery of a New World: or a Discourse tending to prove that there may be another habitable world in the moon," appeared in 1638; and a third edition was issued only two years later together with the second book; "Discourse concerning a New Planet—that 'tis probable our Earth is one of the planets." In this latter, the Bishop stated certain propositions as indubitable; among these were, that the scriptural passages intimating diurnal motion of the sun or of the heavens are fairly capable of another interpretation; that there is no sufficient reason to prove the earth incapable of those motions which Copernicus ascribes to it; that it is more probable the earth does move than the heavens, and that this hypothesis is exactly agreeable to common appearances.^[20] And these books appeared when political and constitutional matters, and not astronomical ones, were the burning questions of the day in England.

The spread of the doctrine was also helped by Thomas Salusbury's translations of the books and passages condemned by the Index in 1616 and 1619. This collection, "intended for gentlemen," he published by popular subscription immediately after the Restoration,^[21] a fact that indicates that not merely mathematicians (whom Whewell claims^[22] were by that time all decided Copernicans) but the general public were interested and awake.^[23]

The appearance of Newton's Principia in 1687 with his statement of the universal application of the law of gravitation, soon ended hesitancy for most people. Twelve years later, John Keill, (1671-1721), the Scotch mathematician and astronomer at Oxford, refuted Descartes's theory of vortices and opened the first course of lectures delivered at Oxford on the new Newtonian philosophy.^[24] Not only were his lectures thronged, but his books advocating the Copernican system in full^[25] went through several editions in relatively few years.

In the Colonies, Yale University which had hitherto been using Gassendi's textbook, adopted the Newtonian ideas a few years later, partly through the gift to the university of some books by Sir Isaac himself, and partly through the enthusiasm of two young instructors there, Johnson and Brown, who in 1714-1722 widened the mathematical course by including the new theories.^[26] The text they used was by Rohault, a Cartesian, edited by Samuel Clarke with critical notes exposing the fallacies of Cartesianism. This "disguised Newtonian treatise" was used at Yale till 1744. The University of Pennsylvania used this same text book even later.^[27]

In 1710 Pope (1688-1744) refers to "our Copernican system,"^[28] and Addison (1671-1719) in the Spectator (July 2, 1711) writes this very modern passage:

"But among this set of writers, there are none who more gratify and enlarge the imagination, than the authors of the new philosophy, whether we consider their theories of the earth or heavens, the discoveries they have made by glasses, or any other of their contemplations on nature.… But when we survey the whole earth at once, and the several planets that lie within its neighborhood, we are filled with a pleasing astonishment, to see so many worlds hanging one above another, and sliding around their axles in such an amazing pomp and solemnity. If, after this, we contemplate those wide fields of aether, that reach in height as far as from Saturn to the fixed stars, and run abroad almost to an infinitude, our imagination finds its capacity filled with so immense a prospect, as puts it upon the stretch to comprehend it. But if we yet rise higher, and consider the fixed stars as so many vast oceans of flame, that are each of them attended with a different set of planets, and still discover new firmaments and new lights, that are sunk farther in those unfathomable depths of aether, so as not to be seen by the strongest of our telescopes, we are lost in such a labyrinth of suns and worlds, and confounded with the immensity and magnificence of nature.

"Nothing is more pleasant to the fancy, than to enlarge itself by degrees, in its contemplation of the various proportions which its several objects bear to each other, when it compares the body of man to the bulk of the whole earth, the earth to the circle it describes round the sun, that circle to the sphere of the fixed stars, the sphere of the fixed stars to the circuit of the whole creation, the whole creation itself to the infinite space that is everywhere diffused around it; … But if, after all this, we take the least particle of these animal spirits, and consider its capacity wrought into a world, that shall contain within those narrow dimensions a heaven and earth, stars and planets, and every different species of living creatures, in the same analogy and proportion they bear to each other in our own universe; such a speculation, by reason of its nicety, appears ridiculous to those who have not turned their thoughts that way, though, at the same time, it is founded on no less than the evidence of a demonstration."^[29]

A little later, Cotton Mather declared (1721) that the "Copernican hypothesis is now generally preferred," and "that there is no objection against the motion of the earth but what has had a full solution."^[30] Soon the semi-popular scientific books took up the Newtonian astronomy. One such was described as "useful for all sea-faring Men, as well as men, and Others."^[31] "Newtonianisme pour les Dames" was advertised in France in the forties.^[32] By 1738 when Pope wrote the Universal Prayer:

"Yet not to earth's contracted span
Thy goodness let me bound
Or think thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round,"

the Copernican-Newtonian astronomy had become a commonplace to most well-educated people in England. To be sure, the great John Wesley (1770) considered the systems of the universe merely "ingenious conjectures," but then, he doubted whether "more than Probabilities we shall ever attain in regard to things at so great a distance from us."^[33]

The old phraseology, however, did recur occasionally, especially in poetry and in hymns. For instance, a hymnal (preface dated 1806) contains such choice selections as:

"Before the pondr'ous earthly globe
In fluid air was stay'd,
Before the ocean's mighty springs
Their liquid stores display'd"—

and:

"Who led his blest unerring hand
Or lent his needful aid
When on its strong unshaken base
The pondr'ous earth was laid?"^[34]

But too much importance should not be attributed to such passages; though poetry and astronomy need not conflict, as Keble illustrated:^[35]

"Ye Stars that round the Sun of Righteousness
In glorious order roll." …

By the middle of the 18th century in England, one could say with Horne "that the Newtonian System had been in possession of the chair for some years;"^[36] but it had not yet convinced the common people, for as Pike wrote in 1753, "Many Common Christians to this day firmly believe that the earth really stands still and that the sun moves all round the earth once a day: neither can they be easily persuaded out of this opinion, because they look upon themselves bound to believe what the Scripture asserts."^[37]

There was, however, just at this time a little group of thinkers who objected to Newton's scheme, "because of the endless uninterrupted flux of matter from the sun in light, an expense which should destroy that orb."^[38] These Hutchinsonians conceived of light as pure ether in motion springing forth from the sun, growing more dense the further it goes till it becomes air, and, striking the circumference of the universe (which is perhaps an immovable solid), is thrown back toward the sun and melted into light again. Its force as its tides of motion strike the earth and the other planets produces their constant gyrations.^[39] Men like Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Sessions, and George Home, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, as a weapon against rationalism, favored this notion that had been expounded by John Hutchinson (1674-1737) in his Moses's Principia (1724).^[40] They were also strongly attracted by the scriptural symbolism with which the book abounds. Leslie Stephen summarizes their doctrines as (1) extreme dislike for rationalism, (2) a fanatical respect for the letter of the Bible, and (3) an attempt to enlist the rising powers of scientific enquiry upon the side of orthodoxy.^[41] This "little eddy of thought"^[42] was not of much influence even at that time, but it has a certain interest as indicating the positions men have taken when on the defensive against new ideas.

1. See Moxon: Advice, A Tutor to Astronomy and Geography (1670): 269.
2. Haldane's Descartes (1905) is the most recent and authoritative account based upon Descartes's works as published in the Adams-Tannery edition (Paris, 1896, foll.). This edition supersedes that of Cousin.
3. Haldane: 153.
4. Ibid: 158.
5. Descartes: Principes, Pt. III, chap. 13.
6. Haldane: 291.
7. Monchamp: 185, note.
8. Haldane: 292.
9. Ibid: 193, 279.
10. Monchamp: 177-181.
11. Berry quotes (p. 92) a passage from Thomas Digges (d. 1595) with the date 1590: "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 confess any mobility 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 or enclosed in the Moone's orbit, and together with the whole globe of mortality is carried round about the Sunne, which like a king in the middst of all, rayneth and giveth laws of motion to all the rest, sphaerically dispersing his glorious beames of light through all this sacred celestiall Temple." Browne also refers to Digges (I, 383).
12. Gilbert: De Magnete, Bk. VI, c. 3-5 (214-228).
13. Johnson; Life, in Browne: I, xvii.
14. Browne: I, 35.
15. Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy, I, 1; I, 66. First edition, 1621; reprinted 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651-2, 1660, 1676.
16. Ibid: I, 385, 389.
17. Herbert: II, 315.
18. Milton: Paradise Lost, Bk. VIII, lines 159 et seq.
     

    The great Puritan divine, John Owen (1616-1683), accepts the miracle of the sun's standing still without a word of reference to the new astronomy. (Works: II, 160.) Farrar states that Owen declared Newton's discoveries were against the evident testimonies of Scripture (Farrar: History of Interpretation: xviii.), but I have been unable to verify this statement. Owen died before the Principia was published in 1687.

19. Whewell: I, 410.
20. Wilkins: Discourse Concerning a New Planet.
21. Salusbury: Math. Coll.: To the Reader.
22. Whewell: I, 411.
23. One London bookseller in 1670 advertised for sale "spheres according to the Ptolmean, Tychonean and Copernican systems with books for their use." (Moxon: 272.) In 1683 in London appeared the third edition of Gassendi's Institutio, the text-book of astronomy in the universities during this period of uncertainty. It too wavers between the Tychonic and the Copernican systems.
24. Dict. of Nat. Biog.: "Keill."
25. Keill: Introductio ad Veram Astronomiam.
26. Cajori: 29-30.
27. Cajori: 37.
28. Pope: Works, VI, 110.
29. Addison: Spectator, No. 420, (IV, 372-373). An interesting contrast to this passage and a good illustration of how the traditional phraseology continued in poetry is found in Addison's famous hymn, written a year later:
     

    "Whilst all the stars that round her [earth] burn
    And all the planets in their turn,
    Confirm the tidings as they roll,
    And spread the truth from pole to pole.
    
    "What though in solemn silence all
    Move round this dark terrestrial ball;
    What though no real voice nor sound
    Amidst their radiant orbs be found;
    
    "In reason's ear they all rejoice,
    And utter forth a glorious voice;
    Forever singing, as they shine,
    'The hand that made us is divine'."

30. Mather: Christian Philosopher. 75, 76.
31. Leadbetter: Astronomy (1729).
32. In de Maupertius: Ouvrages Divers, (at the back).
33. Wesley: Compendium of Natural Philosophy, I, 14, 139.
34. Dobell: Hymns, No. 5, No. 10.
35. Keble: Christian Year, 279.
36. Horne: Fair, Candid, Impartial Statement …, 4.
37. Pike: Philosophia Sacra, 43.
38. Forbes: Letter, (1755).
39. See Wesley: I, 136-7.
40. Dict. of Nat. Biog. "Hutchinson."
41. Stephen: Hist. of Eng. Thought: I, 390.
42. Ibid: 391.