The Revolutionary Astronomers | J. L. E. Dreyer (essay date 1906)
J. L. E. Dreyer (essay date 1906)
SOURCE: "Conclusion," in A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler, by J. L. E. Dreyer, revised by W. H. Stahl, 2d ed., Dover Publications, Inc., 1953, pp. 413-24.
[In the following essay, originally published in 1906 and reprinted with minor changes in 1953, Dreyer sketches the progress of the heliocentric model of the universe with particular attention to the unsuccessful attempts up to Newton's time at salvaging the old geocentric model by means of ever more ingenious modifications.]
The system of Copernicus had been perfected by Kepler, and all that remained to be done was to persuade astronomers and physicists that the motion of the earth was physically possible, and to explain the reason why the earth and planets moved in accordance with Kepler's laws. To give a detailed account of how the earth's motion was gradually accepted, and how Newton's great discovery of the law of universal gravitation...
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