O crassa ingenia.
O caecos coeli spectatores.
Tycho
Brahe (1546-1601)
Danish
astronomer
Brahe
made a splash when he published De
nova stella in 1573,
challenging the Aristotelian doctrine of a perfected, unchanging celestial
sphere.
Living
before the advent of practical telescopes, the gentleman-scientist was the last
of the principal "naked eye" astronomers who worked without
telescopes.
He
was in the van of astronomer-scientists who gradually debunked the Ptolemaic
concept of the cosmos as an Earth-centric (geocentric) system. Brahe proposed a
cosmos with the sun and the moon orbiting the Earth, and the other planets
orbiting the sun, with stars in the classical "fixed spheres."
The
Copernican cosmological system was at odds with Brahe's geo-heliocentric
system, and Kepler later proposed a more correct orbital system based
substantially on Brahe's astoundingly detailed and (for his time) spectacularly
accurate astronomical observations.
Brahe
wasn't in the mainstream, and he was not shy about promoting his own system.
Hence,
his less-than-tactful characterization of others with divergent views:
O
crassa ingenia.
O
caecos coeli spectatores.
O,
thick wits.
O,
blind watchers of the sky.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.
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