For It Is The Duty Of An

The Two Revolutions, I Mean The Annual Revolutions Of The Declination And Of The Centre Of The Earth, Are Not Completely Equal; That Is The Return Of The Declination To Its Original Value Is Slightly Ahead Of The Period Of The Centre. Hence It Necessarily Follows That The Equinoxes And Solstices Seem To Anticipate Their Timing, Not Because The Sphere Of The Fixed Stars Moves To The East, But Rather The Equatorial Circle Moves To The West, Being At An Angle To The Plane Of The Ecliptic In Proportion To The Declination Of The Axis Of The Terrestrial Globe.

So If The Worth Of The Arts Were Measured By The Matter With Which They Deal, This Art-which Some Call Astronomy, Others Astrology, And Many Of The Ancients The Consummation Of Mathematics-would Be By Far The Most Outstanding. This Art Which Is As It Were The Head Of All The Liberal Arts And The One Most Worthy Of A Free Man Leans Upon Nearly All The Other Branches Of Mathe Matics. Arithmetic, Geometry, Optics, Geodesy, Mechanics, And Whatever Others, All Offer Themselves In Its Service.

If There Should Chance To Be Any Mathematicians Who, Ignorant In Mathematics Yet Pretending To Skill In That Science, Should Dare, Upon The Authority Of Some Passage Of Scripture Wrested To Their Purpose, To Condemn And Censure My Hypothesis, I Value Them Not, And Scorn Their Inconsiderate Judgement. De Revolutionibus Coelestibus

Pouring Forth Its Seas Everywhere, Then, The Ocean Envelops The Earth And Fills Its Deeper Chasms.

Astronomy Is Written For Astronomers