Astronomy: The Science of the Heavenly Bodies Part 2

PTOLEMY AND HIS GREAT BOOK

Ptolemy was an observer of the heavens, though not of the highest order; but he had all the work of his predecessors, best of all Hipparchus, to build upon. Ptolemy's greatest work was the "Megale Syntaxis," generally known as the Almagest. It forms a nearly complete compendium of the ancient astronomy, and although it embodies much error, because built on a wrong theory, the Almagest nevertheless is competent to follow the motions of all the bodies in the sky with a close approach to accuracy, even at the present day. This marvelous work written at this critical epoch became as authoritative as the philosophy of Aristotle, and for many centuries it was the last word in the science. The old astrology held full sway, and the Ptolemaic theory of the universe supplied everything necessary: further progress, indeed, was deemed impossible.

The Almagest comprises in all thirteen books, the first two of which deal with the simpler observations of the celestial sphere, its own motion and the apparent motions of sun, moon, and planets upon it. He discusses, too, the postulates of his system and exhibits great skill as an original geometer and mathematician. In the third book he takes up the length of the year, and in the fourth book similarly the moon and the length of the month. Here his mathematical powers are at their best, and he made a discovery of an inequality in the moon's motion known as the evection. Book five describes the construction and use of the astrolabe, a combination of graduated circles with which Ptolemy made most of his observations. In the sixth book he follows mainly Hipparchus in dealing with eclipses of sun and moon. In the seventh and eighth books he discusses the motion of the equinox, and embodies a catalogue of 1,028 stars, substantially as in Hipparchus. The five remaining books of the Almagest deal with the planetary motions, and are the most important of all of Ptolemy's original contributions to astronomy.

Ptolemy's fundamental doctrines were that the heavens are spherical in form, all the heavenly motions being in circles. In his view, the earth too is spherical, and it is located at the center of the universe, being only a point, as it were, in comparison. All was founded on mere appearance combined with the philosophical notion that the circle being the only perfect curve, all motions of heavenly bodies must take place in earth-centered circles. For fourteen or fifteen centuries this false theory persisted, on the authority of Ptolemy and the Almagest, rendering progress toward the development of the true theory impossible.

Ptolemy correctly argued that the earth itself is a sphere that is curved from east to west, and from north to south as well, clinching his argument, as we do to-day, by the visibility of objects at sea, the lower portions of which are at first concealed from our view by the curved surface of the water which intervenes. To Ptolemy also the earth is at the center of the celestial sphere, and it has no motion of translation from that point; but his argument fails to prove this. Truth and error, indeed, are so deftly intermingled that one is led to wonder why the keen intelligence of this great philosopher permitted him to reject the simple doctrine of the earth's rotation on its axis. But if we reflect that there was then no science of natural philosophy or physics proper, and that the age was wholly undeveloped along the lines of practical mechanics, we shall see why the astronomers of Ptolemy's time and subsequent centuries were content to accept the doctrines of the heavens as formulated by him.

When it came to explaining the movements of the "wandering stars," or planets, as we term them, the Ptolemaic theory was very happy in so far as accuracy was concerned, but very unhappy when it had to account for the actual mechanics of the cosmos in s.p.a.ce. Sun and moon were the only bodies that went steadily onward, easterly: whereas all the others, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, although they moved easterly most of the time, nevertheless would at intervals slow down to stationary points, where for a time they did not move at all, and then actually go backward to the west, or retrograde, then become stationary again, finally resuming their regular onward motion to the east.

To help out of this difficulty, the worst possible mechanical scheme was invented, that known as the epicycle. Each of the five planets was supposed to have a fict.i.tious "double," which traveled eastward with uniformity, attached to the end of a huge but mechanically impossible bar. The earth-centered circle in which this traveled round was called the "deferent." What this bar was made of, what stresses it would be subjected to, or what its size would have to be in order to keep from breaking--none of these questions seems to have agitated the ancient and medieval astronomers, any more than the flat-earth astronomy of the Hindu is troubled by the necessity of something to hold up the tortoise that holds up the elephant that holds up the earth.

But at the end of this bar is jointed or swiveled another shorter bar, to the revolving end of which is attached the actual planet itself; and the second bar, by swinging once round the end of the primary advancing bar, would account for the backward or retrograde motion of the planet as seen in the sky. For every new irregularity that was found, in the motion of Mars, for instance, a new and additional bar was requisitioned, until interplanetary s.p.a.ce was hopelessly filled with revolving bars, each producing one of the epicycles, some large, some small, that were needed to take up the vagaries of the several planets.

The Arabic astronomers who kept the science alive through the Middle Ages added epicycle to epicycle, until there was every justification for Milton's verses descriptive of the sphere:

With Centric and Eccentric scribbled o'er, Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb.

CHAPTER VII

ASTRONOMY OF THE MIDDLE AGES

With the fall of Alexandria and the victory of Mohammed throughout the West, and a consequent decline in learning, supremacy in science pa.s.sed to the East and centered round the caliphs of Bagdad in the seventh and eighth centuries. They were interested in astronomy only as a practical, and to them useful, science, in adjusting the complicated lunar calendar of the Mohammedans, in ascertaining the true direction of Mecca which every Mohammedan must know, and in the revival of astrology, to which the Greeks had not attached any particular significance.

Harun al-Rashid ordered the Almagest and many other Greek works translated, of which the modern world would otherwise no doubt never have heard, as the Greek originals are not extant.

Splendid observatories were built at Damascus and Bagdad, and fine instruments patterned after Greek models were continuously used in observing. The Arab astronomers, although they had no clocks, were nevertheless so fully impressed with the importance of time that they added extreme value to their observations of eclipses, for example, by setting down the alt.i.tudes of sun or stars at the same time. On very important occasions the records were certified on oath by a body of barristers and astronomers conjointly--a precedent which fortunately has never been followed.

About the middle of the ninth century, the Caliph Al-Mamun directed his astronomers to revise the Greek measures of the earth's dimensions, and they had less reverence for the Almagest than existed in later centuries: indeed, Tabit ben Korra invented and applied to the tables of the Almagest a theoretical fluctuation in the position of the ecliptic which he called "trepidation," which brought sad confusion into astronomical tables for many succeeding centuries.

Albategnius was another Arab prince whose record in astronomy in the ninth and tenth centuries was perhaps the best: the Ptolemaic values of the precession of the equinoxes and of the obliquity of the ecliptic were improved by new observations, and his excellence as mathematician enabled him to make permanent improvements in the astronomical application of trigonometry.

Abul Wefa was the last of the Bagdad astronomers in the latter half of the tenth century, and his great treatise on astronomy known as the Almagest is sometimes confused with Ptolemy's work. Following him was Ibn Yunos of Cairo, whose labors culminated in the famous Hakemite Tables, which became the standard in mathematical and astronomical computations for several centuries.

Mohammedan astronomy thrived, too, in Spain and northern Africa.

Arzachel of Toledo published the Toledan Tables, and his pupils made improvements in instruments and the methods of calculation. The Giralda was built by the Moors in Seville in 1196, the first astronomical observatory on the continent of Europe; but within the next half century both Seville and Cordova became Christian again, and Arab astronomy was at an end.

Through many centuries, however, the science had been kept alive, even if no great original advances had been achieved; and Arab activities have modified our language very materially, adding many such words as almanac, zenith, and radii, and a wealth of star names, as Aldebaran, Rigel, Betelgeuse, Vega, and so on.

Meanwhile, other schools of astronomy had developed in the East, one at Meraga near the modern Persia, where Na.s.sir Eddin, the astronomer of Hulagu Khan, grandson of the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan, built and used large and carefully constructed instruments, translated all the Greek treatises on astronomy, and published a laborious work known as the Ilkhanic Tables, based on the Hakemite Tables of Ibn Yunos.

More important still was the Tartar school of astronomy under Ulugh Beg, a grandson of Tamerlane, who built an observatory at Samarcand in 1420, published new tables of the planets, and made with his excellent instruments the observations for a new catalogue of stars, the first since Hipparchus, the star places being recorded with great precision.

The European astronomy of the Middle Ages amounted to very little besides translation from the Arabic authors into Latin, with commentaries. Astronomers under the patronage of Alfonso X of Leon and Castile published in 1252 the Alfonsine Tables, which superseded the Toledan tables and were accepted everywhere throughout Europe. Alfonso published also the "Libros del Saber," perhaps the first of all astronomical cyclopedias, in which is said to occur the earliest diagram representing a planetary orbit as an ellipse: Mercury's supposed path round the earth as a center.

Purbach of Vienna about the middle of the 15th century began his "Epitome of Astronomy" based on the "Almagest" of Ptolemy, which was finished by his collaborator Regiomonta.n.u.s, who was an expert in mathematics and published a treatise on trigonometry with the first table of sines calculated for every minute from 0 to 90, a most helpful contribution to theoretical astronomy.

Regiomonta.n.u.s had a very picturesque career, finally taking up his residence in Nuremberg, where a wealthy citizen named Walther became his patron, pupil, and collaborator. The artisans of the city were set at work on astronomical instruments of the greatest accuracy, and the comet of 1472 was the first to be observed and studied in true scientific fashion. Regiomonta.n.u.s was very progressive and the invention of the new art of printing gave him an opportunity to publish Purbach's treatise, which went through several editions and doubtless had much to do in promoting dissatisfaction with the ancient Ptolemaic system, and was thus most significant in preparing a background for the coming of the new Copernican order.

The Nuremberg presses popularized astronomy in other important ways, issuing almanacs, the first precursors of our astronomical Ephemerides.

Regiomonta.n.u.s was practical as well, and invented a new method of getting a ship's position at sea, with tables so accurate that they superseded all others in the great voyages of discovery, and it is probable that they were employed by Columbus in his discovery of the American continent. Regiomonta.n.u.s had died several years earlier, in 1475 at Rome, where he had gone by invitation of the Pope to effect a reformation in the calendar. He was only forty, and his patron Walther kept on with excellent observations, the first probably to be corrected for the effect of atmospheric refraction, although its influence had been known since Ptolemy. The Nuremberg School lasted for nearly two centuries.

Nearly contemporary with Regiomonta.n.u.s were Fracastoro and Peter Apian, whose original observations on comets are worthy of mention because they first noticed that the tails of these bodies always point away from the sun. Leonardo da Vinci was the first to give the true explanation of earth-shine on the moon, and similarly the moon-illumination of the earth; and this no doubt had great weight in disposing of the popular notion of an essential difference of nature between the earth and celestial bodies--all of which helped to prepare the way for Copernicus and the great revolution in astronomical thought.

CHAPTER VIII

COPERNICUS AND THE NEW ERA

Throughout the Middle Ages the progress of astronomy was held back by a combination of untoward circ.u.mstances. A prolonged reaction from the heights attained by the Greek philosophers was to be expected. The uprising of the Mohammedan world, and the savage conquerors in the East did not produce conditions favorable to the origin and development of great ideas.

At the birth of Copernicus, however, in 1473, the time was ripening for fundamental changes from the ancient system, the error of which had helped to hold back the development of the science for centuries. The fifteenth century was most fruitful in a general quickening of intelligence, the invention of printing had much to do with this, as it spread a knowledge of the Greek writers, and led to conflict of authorities. Even Aristotle and Ptolemy were not entirely in harmony, yet each was held inviolate. It was the age of the Reformation, too, and near the end of the century the discovery of America exerted a powerful stimulus in the advance of thought.

Copernicus searched the works of the ancient writers and philosophers, and embodied in this new order such of their ideas as commended themselves in the elaboration of his own system.

Pythagoras alone and his philosophy looked in the true direction. Many believe that he taught that the sun, not the earth, is at the center of our solar system; but his views were mingled with the speculative philosophy of the Greeks, and none of his writings, barring a few meager fragments, have come down to our modern age.

To many philosophers, through all these long centuries, the true theory of the celestial motions must have been obvious, but their views were not formulated, nor have they been preserved in writing. So the fact remains that Copernicus alone first proved the truth of the system which is recognized to-day. This he did in his great treatise ent.i.tled "De Revolutionibus...o...b..um Coelestium," the first printed copy of which was dramatically delivered to him on his deathbed, in May, 1543. The seventy years of his life were largely devoted to the preparation of this work, which necessitated many observations as well as intricate calculations based upon them. Being a canon in the church, he naturally hesitated about publishing his revolutionary views, his friend Rheticus first doing this for him in outline in 1540.

So simple are the great principles that they may be embodied in very few words; what appears to us as the daily revolution of the heavens is not a real motion, but only an apparent one; that is, the heavens are at rest, while the earth itself is in motion, turning round an axis which pa.s.ses through its center. And the second proposition is that the earth is simply one of the six known planets; and they all revolve round the sun as the true center. The solar system, therefore, is "heliocentric,"

or sun-centered, not "geocentric" or earth-centered, as taught by the Ptolemaic theory.

Copernicus demonstrates clearly how his system explains the retrograde motion of the planets and their stationary points, no matter whether they are within the orbit of the earth, as Mercury and Venus, or outside of it, as Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. His system provides also the means of ascertaining with accuracy the proportions of the solar system, or the relative distances of the planets from the sun and from each other.

In this respect also his system possessed a vast advantage over that of Ptolemy, and the planetary distances which Copernicus computed are very close approximations to the measures of the present day.

Reinhold revised the calculations of Copernicus and prepared the "Tabulae Prutenicae," based on the "De Revolutionibus," which proved far superior to the Alfonsine Tables, and were only supplanted by the Rudolphine Tables of Kepler. On the whole we may regard the lifework of Copernicus as fundamentally the most significant in the history and progress of astronomy.

CHAPTER IX

TYCHO, THE GREAT OBSERVER

Clear as Copernicus had made the demonstration of the truth of his new system, it nevertheless failed of immediate and universal acceptance.

The Ptolemaic system was too strongly intrenched, and the motions of all the bodies in the sky were too well represented by it. Accurate observations were greatly needed, and the Landgrave William IV. of Hesse built the Ca.s.sel Observatory, which made a new catalogue of stars, and introduced the use of clocks to carry on the time as measured by the uniform motion of the celestial sphere. Three years after the death of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe was born, and when he was 30 the King of Denmark built for him the famous observatory of Uraniborg, where the great astronomer pa.s.sed nearly a quarter of a century in critically observing the positions of the stars and planets. Tycho was celebrated as a designer and constructor of new types of astronomical instruments, and he printed a large volume of these designs, which form the basis of many in use at the present day. Unfortunately for the genius of Tycho and the significance of his work, the invention of the telescope had not yet been made, so that his observations had not the modern degree of accuracy. Nevertheless, they were destined to play a most important part in the progress of astronomy.

Tycho was sadly in error in his rejection of the Copernican system, although his reasons, in his day, seemed unanswerable. If the outer planets were displaced among the stars by the annual motion of the earth round the sun, he argued, then the fixed stars must be similarly displaced--unless indeed they be at such vast distances that their motions would be too slight to be visible. Of course we know now that this is really true, and that no instruments that Tycho was able to build could possibly have detected the motions, the effects of which we now recognize in the case of the nearer fixed stars in their annual, or parallactic, orbits.