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 Coper-
- ↑ See Moxon: Advice, A Tutor to Astronomy and Geography (1670): 269.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Haldane: 153.
- ↑ Ibid: 158.
- ↑ Descartes: Principes, Pt. III, chap. 13.
