408 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



phers similar to that of drones among bees. Therefore, when I con- 

 sidered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of 

 the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to 

 abandon utterly the work I had begun. 



My friends, however, in spite of long delay and even resistance on 

 my part, withheld me from this decision. First among these was 

 Nicolaus Schonberg, Cardinal of Capua, distinguished in all branches 

 of learning. Next to him comes my very dear friend, Tidemann 

 Giese, Bishop of Culm, a most earnest student, as he is, of sacred and, 

 indeed, of all good learning. The latter has often urged me, at times 

 even spurring me on with reproaches, to publish and at last bring to 

 light the book which had lain in my study not nine years merely, but 

 already going on four times nine. Not a few other very eminent and 

 scholarly men made the same request, urging that I should no longer 

 through fear refuse to give out my work for the common benefit of 

 students of Mathematics. They said I should find that the more 

 absurd most men now thought this theory of mine concerning the 

 motion of the Earth, the more admiration and gratitude it would com- 

 mand after they saw in the publication of my commentaries, the mist 

 of absurdity cleared away by most transparent proofs. So, influenced 

 by these advisers and this hope, I have at length allowed my friends 

 to publish the work, as they had long besought me to do. 



But perhaps your Holiness will not so much wonder that I have 

 ventured to publish these studies of mine, after having taken such 

 pains in elaborating them that I have not hesitated to commit to 

 writing my views of the motion of the Earth, as you will be curious to 

 hear how it occurred to me to venture, contrary to the accepted view 

 of mathematicians, and well-nigh contrary to common sense, to form 

 a conception of any terrestial motion whatsoever. Therefore I would 

 not have it unknown to Your Holiness, that the only thing which 

 induced me to look for another way of reckoning the movements of 

 the heavenly bodies was that I knew that mathematicians by no means 

 agree in their investigations thereof. For, in the first place, they are 

 so much in doubt concerning the motion of the sun and the moon, 

 that they cannot even demonstrate and prove by observation the 

 constant length of a complete year ; and in the second place, in deter- 

 mining the motions both of these and of the other five planets, they 

 fail to employ consistently one set of first principles and hypotheses, 

 but use methods of proof based only upon the apparent revolutions 



