The warfare of science / [Andrew Dickson White].

  • White, Andrew Dickson, 1832-1918.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The warfare of science / [Andrew Dickson White]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Quietly, however, the soil was receiving en- richment, and the air warmth. The processes of mathematics were constantly improved, the heav- enly bodies were steadily though silently observed; and at length appeared, afar off from the centres of thought, on the borders of Poland, a plain, simple-minded scholar, who first fairly uttered to the world the truth, now so commonplace, then so astounding, that the sun and planets do not revolve about the earth, but that the earth and planets revolve about the sun, and that man was l^icholas Kopernik.^ Kopernik had been a professor at Pome, but, words of De Cusa in the Be Bocta Ignorantia, and sums up in these words: “ This train of thought might be a preparation for the reception of the Copernican system; but it is very different from the doctrine that the sun is the centre of the planetary sys- tem.” In the previous passage, Whewell says that De Cusa “ pro- pounded the doctrine of the motion of the earth, more, however, as a paradox than as a reality. We cannot consider this as any dis- tinct anticipation of a profound and consistent view of the truth.” For Aristotle’s views and their elaboration by St. Thomas Aquinas, see the treatise Be Ccdo et Mundo. It is curious to see how even such a biographer of St. Thomas as Archbishop Vaughan slurs over the angelic doctor’s errors. See Vaughan's Life and Labors of St. Thomas of Aquin, pp. 469, 460. * For improvement of mathematical processes, see Braper., In- tellectual Bevelopment of Europe, 613. In looking at this and other admirable summaries, one feels that Prof. Tyndall was not altogether right in lamenting, in his farewell address at New York, that Dr. Draper has devoted so much of his time to historical studies.