

A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



esis is not fully fortified by reasoning based on ex- 

 periment or observation. 



The man who was destined to put forward the 

 theor^^the^earth/s motion in ajwgjL-to. command 

 attention was born in i 4 73>at the village of Thorn, 

 in eastern Prussia. His name was Nicholas Coper- 

 nicus. There is no rriore^ fajnous_name in tfifr-en- 

 tire annals of science than this, yet posterity has 

 never been able fully to establish the lineage of the 

 famous expositor of the true doctrine of the solar 

 system. The city of Thorn lies in a province of that 

 border territory which was then under control of 

 Poland, but which subsequently became a part of 

 Prussia. It is claimed that the aspects of the city 

 were essentially German, and it is admitted that the 

 mother of Copernicus belonged to that race. The 

 nationality of the father is more in doubt, but it is 

 urged that Copernicus used German as hi& mother- 

 tongue. His great work was, of course, written in 

 Latin, according to the custom of the time ; but it is 

 said that, when not employing that language, he 

 always wrote in German. The disputed nationality 

 of^ Copernicus strongly suggests that he came of a 

 mixed racial lineage, and we are reminded again of the 

 influences of those ethnical minglings to which we have 

 previously more than once referred. The acknowl- 

 edged centres, of civilization towards the close of the 

 fifteenth century were Italy and Spain. Therefore, the 

 birthplace of Copernicus lay almost at the confines of 

 civilization, reminding us of that earlier period when 

 Greece was the centre of culture, but when the great 

 Greek thinkers were born in Asia Minor and in Italy. 



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