[A History of Science<br>Volume 2(of 5) by Henry Smith Williams]@TWC D-Link book
A History of Science
Volume 2(of 5)

BOOK II
85/368

Their interest in this regard is purely antiquarian; hence from our changed point of view it seems scarcely credible that Tycho Brahe can have been in earnest when he quotes the Hebrew traditions as proof that the sun revolves about the earth.

Yet we shall see that for almost three centuries after the time of Tycho, these same dreamings continued to be cited in opposition to those scientific advances which new observations made necessary; and this notwithstanding the fact that the Oriental phrasing is, for the most part, poetically ambiguous and susceptible of shifting interpretations, as the criticism of successive generations has amply testified.
As we have said, Tycho Brahe, great observer as he was, could not shake himself free from the Oriental incubus.

He began his objections, then, to the Copernican system by quoting the adverse testimony of a Hebrew prophet who lived more than a thousand years B.C.All of this shows sufficiently that Tycho Brahe was not a great theorist.

He was essentially an observer, but in this regard he won a secure place in the very first rank.

Indeed, he was easily the greatest observing astronomer since Hipparchus, between whom and himself there were many points of resemblance.


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