462 Mr. Halliwell on the History of the Inductive Sciences. 



gree shaken by the discovery of documents tending to alter 

 any of his conckisions. All will agree, that with the materials 

 before him, Professor Whewell has performed his task most 

 admirably, for it would have been the labour of a hundred 

 lives to have carefully examined every available document 

 connected with the facts there brought together. Anxious 

 to place my mite towards the discovery of truth in a secure 

 position, I intend, with the permission of the Editors of the 

 Philosophical Magazine, to commence a series of papers on 

 some portions of the history of the inductive sciences which 

 do not appear to have been as yet thoroughly investigated. 



As regards the history of science in our own country, Pro- 

 fessor Whewell has laboured under very great disadvantages. 

 Thrown almost entirely on continental writers for his in- 

 formation, he has overlooked many important works of the 

 early English authors. For instance, the Qiicestiones Na- 

 turales* of Athelard of Bath, and the Dialogus de philosophiaf 

 of Gulielmus de Conchis, ought to have been analysed as 

 grand landmarks in the period preceding the splendid epoch 

 of Roger Bacon ; and the contents of the present paper will 

 prove how neglected the claims of the English writers have 

 been in their early reception of one of the greatest advances 

 ever made in natural knowledge. 



Prejudice in favour of the authority of Aristotle, even in 

 the sixteenth century the master of all the Universities, for- 

 bad any public belief in the Copernican system, and on that 

 account we find many compilers of astronomical tables ground- 

 ing them upon the new system, without professing, and 

 sometimes denying, a belief in the heliocentric doctrine on 

 which they were founded. Copernicus himself says, " neque 

 enim necesse est eas hypotheses esse veras, imo ne verisimiies 

 quidem ; sed sufficit hoc unum, si calculum observationibus 

 congruentem exhibeant :" so dangerous was it to invade the 

 established belief. Astrologers then received more encour- 

 agement than those skilled in real science; a rascal of the 

 name of Nicholas Kratzer, being the chosen " astronomyer " 

 of Queen Mary, at the same time that Robert Recorde was 

 her physician. Kratzer was the author of a little volume on 

 astronomy, in which he even denies the rotundity of the 



earth : 



'• He saw with his own eyes the moon was round. 

 Was also certain that the earth was square, 

 Because he had journey d fifty miles and found 

 No sign that it was circular any where." 



* MS. Cotton. Galba, E. iv. Mas. Brit, 

 t MS. Arundel. Mus. Brit. 377- 



