Astronomy Is Written For Astronomers

If There Be Some Who, Though Ignorant Of All Mathematics . . . Dare To Reprove This Work, Because Of Some Passage Of Scripture, Which They Have Miserably Warped To Their Purpose, I Regard Them Not, And Even Despise Their Rash Judgement.

Not Only The Phenomena Of The Others Followed From This, But Also It So Bound Together Both The Order And Magnitude Of All The Planets And The Spheres And The Heaven Itself, That In No Single Part Could One Thing Be Altered Without Confusion Among The Other Parts And In All The Universe.

In The Center Of All Rests The Sun. For Who Would Place This Lamp Of A Very Beautiful Temple In Another Or Better Place That This Wherefrom It Can Illuminate Everything At The Same Time? As A Matter Of Fact, Not Unhappily Do Some Call It The Lantern; Others, The Mind And Still Others, The Pilot Of The World. Trismegistus Calls It A "visible God"; Sophocles' Electra, "that Which Gazes Upon All Things." And So The Sun, As If Resting On A Kingly Throne, Governs The Family Of Stars Which Wheel Around.

Therefore I Would Not Have It Unknown To Your Holiness, The The Only Thing Which Induced Me To Look For Another Way Of Reckoning The Movements Of The Heavenly Bodies Was That I Knew That Mathematicians By No Means Agree In Their Investigation Thereof.

Therefore, Having Obtained The Opportunity From These Sources, I Too Began To Consider The Mobility Of The Earth.