The evolution of astronomical
knowledge, generally slow and gradual, offering little to excite
the attention of the public, has yet been marked by two
cataclysms. One of these is seen in the grand conception of
Copernicus that this earth on which we dwell is not a globe fixed
in the centre of the universe, but is simply one of a number of
bodies, turning on their own axes and at the same time moving
around the sun as a centre. It has always seemed to me that the
real significance of the heliocentric system lies in the greatness
of this conception rather than in the fact of the discovery
itself. There is no figure in astronomical history which may more
appropriately claim the admiration of mankind through all time
than that of Copernicus. Scarcely any great work was ever so
exclusively the work of one man as was the heliocentric system the
work of the retiring sage of Frauenburg. No more striking contrast
between the views of scientific research entertained in his time
and in ours can be found than that afforded by the fact that,
instead of claiming credit for his great work, he deemed it rather
necessary to apologize for it and, so far as possible, to
attribute his ideas to the ancients.
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