This exposition of the Copernican doctrine strongly appealed to the literary world of the 17th and 18th centuries in western Europe, especially in the Netherlands, in the Paris salons and in the universities.[355] M. Monchamp cites a number of contemporary comments upon its spread, in one of which it is claimed that in 1691, the university of Louvain had for the preceding forty years been practically composed of Cartesians.[356] For the time being, this theory was a more or less satisfactory explanation of the universe according to known laws; it answered to Galileo's observations; it was in harmony with the Scriptures, and its vortices paved the way for the popular acceptance of Newton's law of universal gravitation.
Protestant England was of course little disturbed by the decree against the Copernican doctrine, a fact that makes it possible, perhaps, to see there more clearly the change in people's attitude from antagonism to acceptance, than in Catholic Europe where fear of the Church's power, and respect for its decisions inhibited honest public expression of thought and conviction. While in England also the literal interpretation of the Scriptures continued to be with the common people a strong objection against the doctrine, the rationalist movement of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries along with Newton's great work, helped win acceptance for it among the better educated classes.
Bruno had failed to win over his English hearers, and in 1600 when the De Magnete was published, William Gilbert, (1540-1603) was apparently the only supporter of the earth's movement then in England,[357] and he advocated the diurnal motion only.[358] Not many, however, were as outspoken as Bacon in denunciation of the system; they were simply somewhat ironically indifferent. An exception to this was Dean Wren of Windsor (father of the famous architect). He could not speak strongly enough against it in his marginal notes on Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica. As Dr. Johnson wrote,[359] Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) himself in his zeal for the old errors, did not easily admit new positions, for he never mentioned the motion of the earth but with contempt and ridicule. This was not enough for the Dean, who wrote in the margin of Browne's book, at such a passage,[360] that there were "eighty-odd expresse places in the Bible affirming in plaine and overt terms the naturall and perpetuall motion of sun and moon" and that "a man should be affrighted to follow that audacious and pernicious suggestion which Satan used, and thereby undid us all in our first parents, that God hath a double meaning in his commands, in effect condemning God of amphibologye. And all this boldness and overweaning having no other ground but a seeming argument of some phenomena forsooth, which notwithstanding we know the learned Tycho, prince of astronomers, who lived fifty-two years since Copernicus, hath by admirable and matchlesse instruments and many yeares exact observations proved to bee noe better than a dreame."
Richard Burton (1576-1639) in The Anatomy of Melancholy speaks of the doctrine as a "prodigious tenent, or paradox," lately revived by "Copernicus, Brunus and some others," and calls Copernicus in consequence the successor of Atlas.[361] The vast extent of the heavens that this supposition requires, he considers "quite opposite to reason, to natural philosophy, and all out as absurd as disproportional, (so some will) as prodigious, as that of the sun's swift motion of the heavens." If the earth is a planet, then other planets may be inhabited (as Christian Huygens argued later on); and this involves a possible plurality of worlds. Burton laughs at those who, to avoid the Church attitude and yet explain the celestial phenomena, invent new hypotheses and new systems of the world, "correcting others, doing worse themselves, reforming some and marring all," as he says of Roeslin's endeavors. "In the meantime the world is tossed in a blanket amongst them; they hoyse the earth up and down like a ball, make it stand and goe at their pleasure."[362] He himself was indifferent.
Others more sensitive to the implications of this system, might exclaim with George Herbert (1593-1633):[363]
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"Although there were some fourtie heav'ns, or more, Sometimes I peere above them all; Sometimes I hardly reach a score, Sometimes to hell I fall. "O rack me not to such a vast extent, Those distances belong to thee. The world's too little for thy tent, A grave too big for me." |
Or they might waver, undecided, like Milton who had the archangel answer Adam's questions thus:[364]
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"But whether thus these things, or whether not, Whether the Sun predominant in Heaven Rise on the Earth, or Earth rise on the Sun, Hee from the East his flaming robe begin, Or Shee from West her silent course advance With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps On her soft axle, while she paces ev'n And bears thee soft with the smooth Air along, Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid, Leave them to God above, him serve and feare; Of other Creatures, as him pleases best, Wherever plac't, let him dispose; joy thou In what he gives to thee, this Paradise And the fair Eve: Heaven is for thee too high To know what passes there: be lowlie wise." (1667) |
Whewell thinks[365] that at this time the diffusion of the Copernican system was due more to the writings of Bishop Wilkins than to those of any one else, for their very extravagances drew stronger attention to it. The first, "The Discovery of a New World: or a Discourse tending to prove that there may be another habitable world in the moon," appeared in 1638; and a third edition was issued only two years later together with the second book; "Discourse concerning a New Planet—that 'tis probable our Earth is one of the planets." In this latter, the Bishop stated certain propositions as indubitable; among these were, that the scriptural passages intimating diurnal motion of the sun or of the heavens are fairly capable of another interpretation; that there is no sufficient reason to prove the earth incapable of those motions which Copernicus ascribes to it; that it is more probable the earth does move than the heavens, and that this hypothesis is exactly agreeable to common appearances.[366] And these books appeared when political and constitutional matters, and not astronomical ones, were the burning questions of the day in England.