Yet the
astronomer does not view them as Kantian antinomies, in the nature
of things insoluble, but as questions to which he may hopefully
look for at least a partial answer.
The problem of the distances of the stars is of peculiar interest
in connection with the Copernican system. The greatest objection
to this system, which must have been more clearly seen by
astronomers themselves than by any others, was found in the
absence of any apparent parallax of the stars. If the earth
performed such an immeasurable circle around the sun as Copernicus
maintained, then, as it passed from side to side of its orbit, the
stars outside the solar system must appear to have a corresponding
motion in the other direction, and thus to swing back and forth as
the earth moved in one and the other direction. The fact that not
the slightest swing of that sort could be seen was, from the time
of Ptolemy, the basis on which the doctrine of the earth's
immobility rested. The difficulty was not grappled with by
Copernicus or his immediate successors. The idea that Nature would
not squander space by allowing immeasurable stretches of it to go
unused seems to have been one from which medieval thinkers could
not entirely break away.
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