192 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



with Columbus, Magellan, and their successors, we have an even 

 more pregnant Discovery of the West. Meanwhile, Diaz and da 

 Gama pushed the explorations of Prince Henry of Portugal, " the 

 Navigator," to the south, and in rounding the Cape of Good 

 Hope completed the Discovery of the South. To the north, ex- 

 plorers had already advanced to regions of perpetual snow and 

 ice, so that in all directions there were new problems of intense 

 interest profoundly moving the imagination of mankind. 



THE REFORMATION. Another potent element was added to 

 the already complex fermentation of medieval ideas when in 1517 

 a widespread insurrection began in the Christian Church, the most 

 conservative and most powerful institution of the Middle Ages. 

 This revolution, for such it proved to be, with which the 

 name of Luther will always be chiefly associated, soon aroused 

 a wave of determined opposition, naturally strongly conservative, 

 known to-day as the "counter-reformation," of which the In- 

 quisition was one instrument. 



The increased importance of the art of navigation reacted 

 powerfully on the underlying sciences of mathematics and astron- 

 omy, particularly through the demand for improved astronomi- 

 cal tables. The Church, even, had a strong, if restricted, interest 

 in astronomy on account of the necessity of more accurate data 

 for its calendar. 



PIONEERS OF THE NEW ASTRONOMY. Nicholas of Cusa 

 (1401-1464), later Bishop of Brixen, wrote on Learned Ignorance, 

 arguing that the universe, being infinite in extent, could have no 

 centre, and that the earth has diurnal rotation. "It is now clear 

 that the earth really moves, if we do not at once observe it, 

 since we perceive motion only through comparison with some- 

 thing immovable." In mathematics he follows Euclid and 

 Archimedes, cooperating in a translation of the latter from 

 Greek into Latin, and dealing with the squaring of the circle. 



He makes a map of the known world, using central projection. 

 He is said to have determined areas of irregular boundary by the 

 then novel method of cutting them out and weighing, and is one 

 of the first to emphasize the importance of measurement in all 



