474 



INDEX 



Arcturus, its unaccountable speed, 



447 



" Arenarius," a work of Archi- 

 medes, in 

 Aristarchus, of Alexandria, on 



motion of the earth, 22 

 anticipation of the Coppernican 



idea, 112 



measures distance of the sun, 89 

 on distance of the sun, 93 

 on the path of the moon, 169 

 Aristotle, on spontaneous genera- 

 tion, 5 

 copies much from Democritus, 



134 

 his doctrine of a fixed earth, 



102 



Middle Age deification of, 156 

 on size of the earth, 75 

 Armils, accuracy of Alexandrian, 



95 



Arnold, Sir Edwin, his poem, 155 

 Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 2, 370 

 Arrhenius, work on cosmical physics, 



12 



ideas of cosmogony, 423 

 on origin of meteorites, 437 

 on the cycle of matter, 461 

 Assassins, Al-Hassan, founder of 



sect, 155 



Asteroids, discovery of, 307 

 Astronomical knowledge, synonym 



of certitude, 377 

 Atheism, periods of its recurrence, 



159 



Atheists, the first of, 141 

 Athens, lateness of its intellectual 



awakening, 131 

 Atmosphere, height of the earth's, 



241 

 Atomic idea, early arguments for, 



136 

 Atoms, early ideas of, 136 



rain of, in space, Democritus' 



conception of, 138 

 Attraction, early ideas of, 122 

 Coppernicus on, 170 

 Gilbert's ideas of, 190 

 insufficient to hold the stars in 



a system, 446 

 Kepler on, 188 

 law of, Newton's account of its 



discovery, 255 

 Newton's discovery rejected by 



Huyghens, 246 



true nature of Newton's dis- 

 covery, 260 

 Augustine, St., his age, 151 



Auzout, applies the micrometer to 



telescopes, 245 



Averroes, his type of thought, 156 

 mistaken observation of Mercury, 



221 

 Avicenna, his type of thought, 156 



BACILLI, structure and size of, 40 

 Bacon, Lord, quotation from Plato, 



99 



apology for, 203 

 estimate of his work, 213 

 ideas on attraction, 246 

 ignorant of Kepler's work, 192 

 on Coppernicus, 212 

 on Democritus, 130 

 rejection of Coppernican theory, 



177 



Bacon, Roger, influence on Colum- 

 bus, 159 



describes the telescope, 200 

 Bacteria, obscure utility of, 16 

 Baer, von, stimulus to Spencer, 136 

 Bailly, his History of Astronomy, 1 1 

 on early measures of the earth, 77 

 on the parallax of the sun, 95 

 quotation from, on astronomy, 1 10 

 quotation from, 268 

 Balance, the, discovery of, 54 

 Bankruptcy of science, 39 

 Barometer, discovered by Torri- 



celli, 240 



Bel, servitors of, 68 

 Benn, on early mathematics, 57 

 Bentley, Newton's letter to, on 



gravitation, 452 

 Berenson, method of identifying 



painters, 380 

 Berkeley, Bishop, conceptions of a 



dream world, 31 



Bernouillis, the, family of mathe- 

 maticians, 295 



calculus of the solar system, 402 

 Bessel, the first to determine stellar 



parallax, 334 



on astronomy of the invisible, 372 

 Bethlehem, Star of, 379 

 Binary systems, Herschel's dis- 

 covery of, 324 

 probable origin of, 378 

 spectroscopic, 374 

 Binomial theorem, invented by 



Newton, 255 

 Bion, his teachings, 64 

 Bjerknes, hydro-mechanical theory 



of gravitation, 455 

 Boccaccio, an evangel of the Re- 

 naissance, 159 



