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CHAPTER III. 



SEQUEL TO COPERNICUS. THE RECEPTION AND DE- 

 VELOPMENT OF THE COPERNICAN THEORY. 



Sect. 1. First Reception of the Copernican Theory. 



THE theories of Copernicus made their way 

 among astronomers, in the manner in which 

 true astronomical theories always obtain the assent 

 of competent judges. They led to the construction 

 of Tables of the motion of the sun, moon, and 

 planets, as the theories of Hipparchus and Ptolemy 

 had done ; and the verification of the doctrines was 

 to be looked for, from the agreement of these 

 Tables with observation, through a sufficient course 

 of time. The work De Revolutionibus contains such 

 Tables. In 1551 Reinhold improved and repub- 

 lished Tables founded on the principles of Coper- 

 nicus. "We owe," he says in his preface, "great 

 obligations to Copernicus, both for his laborious 

 observations, and for restoring the doctrine of the 

 Motions. But though his geometry is perfect, the 

 good old man appears to have been, at times, care- 

 less in his numerical calculations. I have, there- 

 fore, recalculated the whole, from a comparison of 

 his observations with those of Ptolemy and others, 

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