A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



tional principles. To have predicated the sun as a 

 great molten mass of iron was indeed a wonderful 

 anticipation of the results of the modern spectroscope. 

 Nor can it be said that this hypothesis of Anaxagoras 

 was a purely visionary guess. It was in all probability 

 a scientific deduction from the observed character of 

 meteoric stones. Reference has already been made 

 to the alleged prediction of the fall of the famous 

 meteor at' ^Egespotomi by Anaxagoras. The assertion 

 that he actually predicted this fall in any proper sense 

 of the word would be obviously absurd. Yet the fact 

 that his name is associated with it suggests that he had 

 studied similar meteorites, or else that he studied this 

 particular one, since it is not quite clear whether it 

 was before or after this fall that he made the famous 

 assertion that space is full of falling stones. We should 

 stretch the probabilities were we to assert that An- 

 axagoras knew that shooting-stars and meteors were 

 the same, yet there is an interesting suggestiveness 

 in his likening the shooting-stars to sparks leaping 

 from the firmament, taken in connection with his ob- 

 servation on meteorites. Be this as it may, the fact 

 that something which falls from heaven as a blazing 

 light turns out to be an iron-like mass may very well 

 have suggested to the most rational of thinkers that 

 the great blazing light called the sun has the same 

 composition. This idea grasped, it was a not un- 

 natural extension to conceive the other heavenly bod- 

 ies as having the same composition. 



This led to a truly startling thought. Since the 

 heavenly bodies are of the same composition as the 

 earth, and since they are observed to be whirling 



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