THE NEW COSMOLOGY 



view it seems scarcely credible that Tycho Brahe can 

 have been in earnest when he quotes the Hebrew 

 traditions as proof that the sun revolves about the 

 earth. Yet we shall see that for almost three centuries 

 after the time of Tycho, these same dreamings con- 

 tinued to be cited in opposition to those scientific ad- 

 vances which new observations made necessary; and 

 this notwithstanding the fact that the Oriental phras- 

 ing is, for the most part, poetically ambiguous and 

 susceptible of shifting interpretations, as the criticism 

 of successive generations has amply testified. 



As we have said, Tycho Brahe, great observer as he 

 was, could not shake himself free from the Oriental 

 incubus. He began his objections, then, to the Coperni- 

 can system by quoting the adverse testimony of a 

 Hebrew prophet who lived more than a thousand 

 years B.C. All of this shows sufficiently that Tycho 

 Brahe was not a great theorist. He was essentially 

 an observer, but in this regard he won a secure place 

 in the very first rank. Indeed, he was easily the 

 greatest observing astronomer since Hipparchus, be- 

 tween whom and himself there were many points of 

 resemblance. Hipparchus, it will be recalled, rejected 

 the Aristarchian conception of the universe just as 

 Tycho rejected the conception of Copernicus. 



But if Tycho propounded no great generalizations, 

 the list of specific advances due to him is a long one, 

 and some of these were to prove important aids in the 

 hands of later workers to the secure demonstration of 

 the Copernican idea. One of his most important 

 series of studies had to do with comets. Regarding 

 these bodies there had been the greatest uncertainty 



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