Great Astronomers by Robert Stawell Ball (best ereader for students .txt) 📖
- Author: Robert Stawell Ball
- Performer: -
Book online «Great Astronomers by Robert Stawell Ball (best ereader for students .txt) 📖». Author Robert Stawell Ball
poised without support in space, appears preposterous. Would it
not fall? we are immediately asked. Yes, doubtless it could not
remain poised in any way in which we try the experiment.
We must, however, observe that there are no such ideas as upwards
or downwards in relation to open space. To say that a body falls
downwards, merely means that it tries to fall as nearly as
possible towards the centre of the earth. There is no one
direction along which a body will tend to move in space, in
preference to any other. This may be illustrated by the fact that
a stone let fall at New Zealand will, in its approach towards the
earth’s centre, be actually moving upwards as far as any locality
in our hemisphere is concerned. Why, then, argued Ptolemy, may
not the earth remain poised in space, for as all directions are
equally upward or equally downward, there seems no reason why the
earth should require any support? By this reasoning he arrives at
the fundamental conclusion that the earth is a globular body
freely lying in space, and surrounded above, below, and on all
sides by the glittering stars of heaven.
The perception of this sublime truth marks a notable epoch in the
history of the gradual development of the human intellect. No
doubt, other philosophers, in groping after knowledge, may have
set forth certain assertions that are more or less equivalent to
this fundamental truth. It is to Ptolemy we must give credit,
however, not only for announcing this doctrine, but for
demonstrating it by clear and logical argument. We cannot easily
project our minds back to the conception of an intellectual state
in which this truth was unfamiliar. It may, however, be well
imagined that, to one who thought the earth was a flat plain of
indefinite extent, it would be nothing less than an intellectual
convulsion for him to be forced to believe that he stood upon a
spherical earth, forming merely a particle relatively to the
immense sphere of the heavens.
What Ptolemy saw in the movements of the stars led him to the
conclusion that they were bright points attached to the inside of
a tremendous globe. The movements of this globe which carried the
stars were only compatible with the supposition that the earth
occupied its centre. The imperceptible effect produced by a
change in the locality of the observer on the apparent brightness
of the stars made it plain that the dimensions of the terrestrial
globe must be quite insignificant in comparison with those of the
celestial sphere. The earth might, in fact, be regarded as a
grain of sand while the stars lay upon a globe many yards in
diameter.
So tremendous was the revolution in human knowledge implied by
this discovery, that we can well imagine how Ptolemy, dazzled as
it were by the fame which had so justly accrued to him, failed to
make one further step. Had he made that step, it would have
emancipated the human intellect from the bondage of fourteen
centuries of servitude to a wholly monstrous notion of this
earth’s importance in the scheme of the heavens. The obvious fact
that the sun, the moon, and the stars rose day by day, moved
across the sky in a glorious never-ending procession, and duly set
when their appointed courses had been run, demanded some
explanation. The circumstance that the fixed stars preserved
their mutual distances from year to year, and from age to age,
appeared to Ptolemy to prove that the sphere which contained those
stars, and on whose surface they were believed by him to be fixed,
revolved completely around the earth once every day. He would
thus account for all the phenomena of rising and setting
consistently with the supposition that our globe was stationary.
Probably this supposition must have appeared monstrous, even to
Ptolemy. He knew that the earth was a gigantic object, but, large
as it may have been, he knew that it was only a particle in
comparison with the celestial sphere, yet he apparently believed,
and certainly succeeded in persuading other men to believe, that
the celestial sphere did actually perform these movements.
Ptolemy was an excellent geometer. He knew that the rising and
the setting of the sun, the moon, and the myriad stars, could have
been accounted for in a different way. If the earth turned round
uniformly once a day while poised at the centre of the sphere of
the heavens, all the phenomena of rising and setting could be
completely explained. This is, indeed, obvious after a moment’s
reflection. Consider yourself to be standing on the earth at the
centre of the heavens. There are stars over your head, and half
the contents of the heavens are visible, while the other half are
below your horizon. As the earth turns round, the stars over your
head will change, and unless it should happen that you have taken
up your position at either of the poles, new stars will pass into
your view, and others will disappear, for at no time can you have
more than half of the whole sphere visible. The observer on the
earth would, therefore, say that some stars were rising, and that
some stars were setting. We have, therefore, two totally distinct
methods, each of which would completely explain all the observed
facts of the diurnal movement. One of these suppositions requires
that the celestial sphere, bearing with it the stars and other
celestial bodies, turns uniformly around an invisible axis, while
the earth remains stationary at the centre. The other supposition
would be, that it is the stupendous celestial sphere which remains
stationary, while the earth at the centre rotates about the same
axis as the celestial sphere did before, but in an opposite
direction, and with a uniform velocity which would enable it to
complete one turn in twenty-four hours. Ptolemy was mathematician
enough to know that either of these suppositions would suffice for
the explanation of the observed facts. Indeed, the phenomena of
the movements of the stars, so far as he could observe them, could
not be called upon to pronounce which of these views was true, and
which was false.
Ptolemy had, therefore, to resort for guidance to indirect lines
of reasoning. One of these suppositions must be true, and yet it
appeared that the adoption of either was accompanied by a great
difficulty. It is one of his chief merits to have demonstrated
that the celestial sphere was so stupendous that the earth itself
was absolutely insignificant in comparison therewith. If, then,
this stupendous sphere rotated once in twenty-four hours, the
speed with which the movement of some of the stars must be
executed would be so portentous as to seem well-nigh impossible.
It would, therefore, seem much simpler on this ground to adopt the
other alternative, and to suppose the diurnal movements were due
to the rotation of the earth. Here Ptolemy saw, or at all events
fancied he saw, objections of the weightiest description. The
evidence of the senses appeared directly to controvert the
supposition that this earth is anything but stationary. Ptolemy
might, perhaps, have dismissed this objection on the ground that
the testimony of the senses on such a matter should be entirely
subordinated to the interpretation which our intelligence would
place upon the facts to which the senses deposed. Another
objection, however, appeared to him to possess the gravest moment.
It was argued that if the earth were rotating, there is nothing to
make the air participate in this motion, mankind would therefore
be swept from the earth by the furious blasts which would arise
from the movement of the earth through an atmosphere at rest.
Even if we could imagine that the air were carried round with the
earth, the same would not apply, so thought Ptolemy, to any object
suspended in the air. So long as a bird was perched on a tree, he
might very well be carried onward by the moving earth, but the
moment he took wing, the ground would slip from under him at a
frightful pace, so that when he dropped down again he would find
himself at a distance perhaps ten times as great as that which a
carrier-pigeon or a swallow could have traversed in the same time.
Some vague delusion of this description seems even still to crop
up occasionally. I remember hearing of a proposition for balloon
travelling of a very remarkable kind. The voyager who wanted to
reach any other place in the same latitude was simply to ascend in
a balloon, and wait there till the rotation of the earth conveyed
the locality which happened to be his destination directly beneath
him, whereupon he was to let out the gas and drop down! Ptolemy
knew quite enough natural philosophy to be aware that such a
proposal for locomotion would be an utter absurdity; he knew that
there was no such relative shift between the air and the earth as
this motion would imply. It appeared to him to be necessary that
the air should lag behind, if the earth had been animated by a
movement of rotation. In this he was, as we know, entirely wrong.
There were, however, in his days no accurate notions on the
subject of the laws of motion.
Assiduous as Ptolemy may have been in the study of the heavenly
bodies, it seems evident that he cannot have devoted much thought
to the phenomena of motion of terrestrial objects. Simple,
indeed, are the experiments which might have convinced a
philosopher much less acute than Ptolemy, that, if the earth did
revolve, the air must necessarily accompany it. If a rider
galloping on horseback tosses a ball into the air, it drops again
into his hand, just as it would have done had he been remaining at
rest during the ball’s flight; the ball in fact participates in
the horizontal motion, so that though it really describes a curve
as any passer-by would observe, yet it appears to the rider
himself merely to move up and down in a straight line. This fact,
and many others similar to it, demonstrate clearly that if the
earth were endowed with a movement of rotation, the atmosphere
surrounding it must participate in that movement. Ptolemy did
not know this, and consequently he came to the conclusion
that the earth did not rotate, and that, therefore,
notwithstanding the tremendous improbability of so mighty an
object as the celestial sphere spinning round once in every
twenty-four hours, there was no course open except to believe that
this very improbable thing did really happen. Thus it came to
pass that Ptolemy adopted as the cardinal doctrine of his system a
stationary earth poised at the centre of the celestial sphere,
which stretched around on all sides at a distance so vast that the
diameter of the earth was an inappreciable point in comparison
therewith.
Ptolemy having thus deliberately rejected the doctrine of the
earth’s rotation, had to make certain other entirely erroneous
suppositions. It was easily seen that each star required exactly
the same period for the performance of a complete revolution
of the heavens. Ptolemy knew that the stars were at enormous
distances from the earth, though no doubt his notions on this
point came very far short of what we know to be the reality. If
the stars had been at very varied distances, then it would be so
wildly improbable that they should all accomplish their
revolutions in the same time, that Ptolemy came to the
conclusion that they must be all at the same distance, that is,
that they must be all on the surface of a sphere. This view,
however erroneous, was corroborated by the obvious fact that the
stars in the constellations preserved their relative places
unaltered for centuries.
Comments (0)