462 Mr. Halliwell on the History of the Inductive Sciences, 
gree shaken by the discovery of documents tending to alter 
any of his conclusions. 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 Qucestiones Na~ 
turales^ of Athelard of Bath, and the Dialogus de philosophia’\ 
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 verisimiles 
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. Mus. Brit, 
t MS. Arundel. Mus. Brit. 377. 
