That space is
infinite is an unexpressed axiom, tacitly assumed by Euclid and
his successors. Combining this with the most elementary
consideration of the properties of the triangle, it would be seen
that a body of any given size could be placed at such a distance
in space as to appear to us like a point. Hence a body as large as
our earth, which was known to be a globe from the time that the
ancient Phoenicians navigated the Mediterranean, if placed in the
heavens at a sufficient distance, would look like a star. The
obvious conclusion that the stars might be bodies like our globe,
shining either by their own light or by that of the sun, would
have been a first step to the understanding of the true system of
the world.
There is historic evidence that this deduction did not wholly
escape the Greek thinkers. It is true that the critical student
will assign little weight to the current belief that the vague
theory of Pythagoras--that fire was at the centre of all things--
implies a conception of the heliocentric theory of the solar
system. But the testimony of Archimedes, confused though it is in
form, leaves no serious doubt that Aristarchus of Samos not only
propounded the view that the earth revolves both on its own axis
and around the sun, but that he correctly removed the great
stumbling-block in the way of this theory by adding that the
distance of the fixed stars was infinitely greater than the
dimensions of the earth's orbit.
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