The gradual acceptance of the Copernican theory of the universe Part 13

In 1710 Pope (1688-1744) refers to "our Copernican system,"[374] and Addison (1671-1719) in the _Spectator_ (July 2, 1711) writes this very modern pa.s.sage:

"But among this set of writers, there are none who more gratify and enlarge the imagination, than the authors of the new philosophy, whether we consider their theories of the earth or heavens, the discoveries they have made by gla.s.ses, or any other of their contemplations on nature.... But when we survey the whole earth at once, and the several planets that lie within its neighborhood, we are filled with a pleasing astonishment, to see so many worlds hanging one above another, and sliding around their axles in such an amazing pomp and solemnity. If, after this, we contemplate those wide fields of aether, that reach in height as far as from Saturn to the fixed stars, and run abroad almost to an infinitude, our imagination finds its capacity filled with so immense a prospect, as puts it upon the stretch to comprehend it. But if we yet rise higher, and consider the fixed stars as so many vast oceans of flame, that are each of them attended with a different set of planets, and still discover new firmaments and new lights, that are sunk farther in those unfathomable depths of aether, so as not to be seen by the strongest of our telescopes, we are lost in such a labyrinth of suns and worlds, and confounded with the immensity and magnificence of nature.

"Nothing is more pleasant to the fancy, than to enlarge itself by degrees, in its contemplation of the various proportions which its several objects bear to each other, when it compares the body of man to the bulk of the whole earth, the earth to the circle it describes round the sun, that circle to the sphere of the fixed stars, the sphere of the fixed stars to the circuit of the whole creation, the whole creation itself to the infinite s.p.a.ce that is everywhere diffused around it; ... But if, after all this, we take the least particle of these animal spirits, and consider its capacity wrought into a world, that shall contain within those narrow dimensions a heaven and earth, stars and planets, and every different species of living creatures, in the same a.n.a.logy and proportion they bear to each other in our own universe; such a speculation, by reason of its nicety, appears ridiculous to those who have not turned their thoughts that way, though, at the same time, it is founded on no less than the evidence of a demonstration."[375]

[Footnote 374: Pope: _Works_, VI, 110.]

[Footnote 375: Addison: _Spectator_, No. 420, (IV, 372-373). An interesting contrast to this pa.s.sage and a good ill.u.s.tration of how the traditional phraseology continued in poetry is found in Addison's famous hymn, written a year later:

"Whilst all the stars that round her [earth] burn And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole.

"What though in solemn silence all Move round this dark terrestrial ball; What though no real voice nor sound Amidst their radiant orbs be found;

"In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice; Forever singing, as they shine, 'The hand that made us is divine'."]

A little later, Cotton Mather declared (1721) that the "Copernican hypothesis is now generally preferred," and "that there is no objection against the motion of the earth but what has had a full solution."[376] Soon the semi-popular scientific books took up the Newtonian astronomy. One such was described as "useful for all sea-faring Men, as well as Gentlemen, and Others."[377]

"Newtonianisme pour les Dames" was advertised in France in the forties.[378] By 1738 when Pope wrote the _Universal Prayer_:

"Yet not to earth's contracted span Thy goodness let me bound Or think thee Lord alone of man, When thousand worlds are round,"

the Copernican-Newtonian astronomy had become a commonplace to most well-educated people in England. To be sure, the great John Wesley (1770) considered the systems of the universe merely "ingenious conjectures," but then, he doubted whether "more than Probabilities we shall ever attain in regard to things at so great a distance from us."[379]

[Footnote 376: Mather: _Christian Philosopher_, 75, 76.]

[Footnote 377: Leadbetter: _Astronomy_ (1729).]

[Footnote 378: In de Maupertius: _Ouvrages Divers_, (at the back).]

[Footnote 379: Wesley: _Compendium of Natural Philosophy_, I, 14, 139.]

The old phraseology, however, did recur occasionally, especially in poetry and in hymns. For instance, a hymnal (preface dated 1806) contains such choice selections as:

"Before the pondr'ous earthly globe In fluid air was stay'd, Before the ocean's mighty springs Their liquid stores display'd"--

and:

"Who led his blest unerring hand Or lent his needful aid When on its strong unshaken base The pondr'ous earth was laid?"[380]

[Footnote 380: Dobell: _Hymns_, No. 5, No. 10.]

But too much importance should not be attributed to such pa.s.sages; though poetry and astronomy need not conflict, as Keble ill.u.s.trated:[381]

"Ye Stars that round the Sun of Righteousness In glorious order roll...."

[Footnote 381: Keble: _Christian Year_, 279.]

By the middle of the 18th century in England, one could say with Horne "that the Newtonian System had been in possession of the chair for some years;"[382] but it had not yet convinced the common people, for as Pike wrote in 1753, "Many Common Christians to this day firmly believe that the earth really stands still and that the sun moves all round the earth once a day: neither can they be easily persuaded out of this opinion, because they look upon themselves bound to believe what the Scripture a.s.serts."[383]

[Footnote 382: Horne: _Fair, Candid, Impartial Statement ..._, 4.]

[Footnote 383: Pike: _Philosophia Sacra_, 43.]

There was, however, just at this time a little group of thinkers who objected to Newton's scheme, "because of the endless uninterrupted flux of matter from the sun in light, an expense which should destroy that orb."[384] These Hutchinsonians conceived of light as pure ether in motion springing forth from the sun, growing more dense the further it goes till it becomes air, and, striking the circ.u.mference of the universe (which is perhaps an immovable solid), is thrown back toward the sun and melted into light again. Its force as its tides of motion strike the earth and the other planets produces their constant gyrations.[385] Men like Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Sessions, and George Horne, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, as a weapon against rationalism, favored this notion that had been expounded by John Hutchinson (1674-1737) in his _Moses's Principia_ (1724).[386] They were also strongly attracted by the scriptural symbolism with which the book abounds. Leslie Stephen summarizes their doctrines as (1) extreme dislike for rationalism, (2) a fanatical respect for the letter of the Bible, and (3) an attempt to enlist the rising powers of scientific enquiry upon the side of orthodoxy.[387]

This "little eddy of thought"[388] was not of much influence even at that time, but it has a certain interest as indicating the positions men have taken when on the defensive against new ideas.

[Footnote 384: Forbes: _Letter_, (1755).]

[Footnote 385: See Wesley: I, 136-7.]

[Footnote 386: _Dict. of Nat. Biog._: "Hutchinson."]

[Footnote 387: Stephen: _Hist. of Eng. Thought_: I, 390.]

[Footnote 388: Ibid: 391.]

CHAPTER V.

THE CHURCH AND THE NEW ASTRONOMY: CONCLUSION.

Astronomical thought on the Continent was more hampered, in the Catholic countries especially, by the restrictive opinions of the Church. Yet in 1757, when the decree prohibiting all books dealing with the Copernican doctrine was removed from the Index, that system had already long been adopted by the more celebrated academies of Europe, for so Mme. de Premontval claimed in 1750; and it was then reaching out to non-scientific readers, through simple accounts for "ladies and others not well versed in these somewhat technical matters."[389] The great landmark in the development of the doctrine was the publication of Newton's _Principia_ in 1687, though its effect in Europe was of course slower in being felt than it was in England.

Newton's work and that of the astronomers immediately following him was influential except where the Church's prohibitions still held sway.

[Footnote 389: de Premontval: _Le Mechaniste Philosophe_, 54, 72. (The Hague, 1750).]

During this period, the books published in free Holland were more outspoken in their radical acceptance or in their uncertainty of the truth than were those published in the Catholic countries. Christian Huygens's treatises on the plurality of worlds not only fully accepted the Copernican doctrine, but like those of Bishop Wilkins in England, deduced therefrom the probability that the other planets are inhabited even as the earth is. A writer[390] on the sphere in 1697 stated the different theories of the universe so that his readers might choose the one that to them appeared the most probable. He himself preferred the Cartesian explanation as the simplest and most convenient of all, "though it should be held merely as an hypothesis and not as in absolute agreement with the truth." Pierre Bayle[391] also explained the different systems, but appears himself to waver between the Copernican and the Tychonic conceptions. He used, however, the old word "perigee" (nearness to the earth) rather than the Newtonian "perihelion" (nearness to the sun). His objections to the Copernican doctrine have a familiar ring: It is contrary to the evidence of the senses; a stone would not fall back to its starting-place, nor could a bird return to her nest; the earth would not be equidistant from the horizon and the two poles; and lastly it is contrary to the Scriptures. Only a few years later, however, De Maupertius wrote that no one at that day (1744) doubted any longer the motion of the earth around its axis, and he believed with Newton that the laws of gravity applied to the universe as well as to the earth. Then he proceeded to explain the Copernican system which he favored on the ground of its greater probability.[392]

[Footnote 390: de Brisbar: _Calendrier Historique_, (Leyden), 228-233.]

[Footnote 391: Bayle: _Systeme Abrege de Philosophie_ (The Hague, 1731), IV, 394-412.]

[Footnote 392: de Maupertius: _Elements de Geographie_, xv, 9-14.]

Even in 1750, Mme. de Premontval thought it wiser to publish in Holland her little life of her father, _Le Mechaniste Philosophe_.

This Jean Piegeon, she claimed, was the first man in France to make spheres according to the Copernican system. An orphan, he was educated by a priest; then took up carpentry and mechanics. When he tried to make a celestial sphere according to the Ptolemaic system, he became convinced of its falsity because of its complexities. Therefore he plunged into a study of the new system which he adopted. His first Copernican sphere was exhibited before Louis XIV at Versailles in 1706 and was bought by the king and presented to the Academie des Sciences.[393] The second was taken to Canada by one of the royal officials. Public interest in his work was keen; even Peter the Great, who was then in Paris, visited his workroom.[394] M. Piegeon also wrote a book on the Copernican system.[395]

[Footnote 393: de Premontval: 123.]

[Footnote 394: Ibid: 132.]

[Footnote 395: Ibid: 157.]

It seems, however, as though M. Piegeon were slightly in advance of his age, or more daring, perhaps, than his contemporaries, for there was almost no outspoken support of the Copernican system at this time in France. Even Ca.s.sini of the French Academie des Sciences did not explicitly support it, though he spoke favorably of it and remarked that recent observations had demonstrated the revolutions of each planet around the sun in accordance with that supposition.[396] But the great orator, Bossuet, (1627-1703), clung to the Ptolemaic conception as alone orthodox, and scriptural.[397] Abbe Fenelon (1651-1715) writing on the existence of G.o.d, asked: "Who is it who has hung up this motionless ball of the earth; who has placed the foundations for it," and "who has taught the sun to turn ceasely [Transcriber's Note: ceaselessly] and regularly in s.p.a.ces where nothing troubles it?"[398] And a writer on the history of the heavens as treated by poets, philosophers and Moses (1739), tells Ga.s.sendi, Descartes and many other great thinkers that their ideas of the heavens are proved vain and false by daily experience as well as by the account of Creation; for the most enlightened experience is wholly and completely in accord with the account of Moses. This book was written, the author said, for young people students of philosophy and the humanities, also for teachers.[399]

[Footnote 396: Ca.s.sini: _De l'Origine et du Progres ..._, 35.]