The Anti-Tycho
Table of Contents
What you refer to is the method he uses in writing his doctrine.
But I do not believe it to be that with which he investigated it.
Rather, I think he first obtained it through the senses, experiments, and observations.
- This is to assure himself as much as possible of his conclusions.
Afterwards, he sought means to make them demonstrable.
This comes about because when the conclusion is true, one may by making use of analytical methods hit on some proposition which is already demonstrated, or arrive at some axiomatic principle.
But if the conclusion is false, one can go on forever without ever finding any known truth – if indeed one does not encounter some impossibility or manifest absurdity.
Pythagoras was sure that the square on the side opposite the right angle in a right triangle was equal to the squares on the other two sides.
- This was long before he discovered the proof for which he sacrificed a hecatomb,
The certainty of a conclusion assists not a little in the discovery of its proof – meaning always in the demonstrative sciences.
Aristotle preferred sensible experience to any argument.
Excellent astronomers have observed many comets beyond the lunar orbit, besides the two new stars of 1572 and 1604, which were beyond all the planets.
They would have seen dark matter [sunspots] produced and dissolved on the sun’s surface with the aid of the telescope.
- These appear dense much like the clouds on the earth.
Many of these are so vast as to exceed:
- the Mediterranean Sea
- all of Africa with Asia thrown in
If Aristotle had seen these things, what do you think he would have said and done, Simplicio?
Aristotle was the master of all science.
As to the comets, have not these modem astronomers who wanted to make them celestial been vanquished by the Anti-Tycho?
Vanquished, moreover, by their own weapons; that is, by means of parallaxes and of calculations turned about every which way, and finally concluding in favor of Aristotle that they are all elemental.
A thing so fundamental to the innovators having been destroyed, what more remains to keep them on their feet?
What do you say about the new stars of 1572 and 1604, and of the sunspots?
I care little whether comets are generated below or beyond the moon. Nor have I ever set much store by Tycho’s verbosity.
I believe that the matter of comets is elemental.
- They may rise as they please without encountering any obstacle from the impenetrability of the Peripatetic heavens, which I hold to be far more tenuous, yielding, and subtle than our air.
I doubt whether comets are subject to parallax.
Besides, the inconstancy of the observations upon which they have been computed renders me equally suspicious of both his opinions and his adversary’s.
I think that the Anti-Tycho sometimes trims to its author’s taste those observations which do not suit his purposes, or else declares them to be erroneous.
The Anti-Tycho explains that the new stars are not heavenly bodies.
and that if its adversaries wish to prove any alterations and generations in the latter, they must show us mutations made in stars which have already been described for a long time and which are celestial objects beyond doubt. And this can never possibly be done.
He does not mention sunspots at all. I think he sees them as an illusion of the telescope or some phenomenon produced by the air.
Some say that they are stars which, like Venus and Mercury, which go around the sun in orbits. We see them as sunspots when they pass over the sun. They often collect together, and then again to separate.
Others believe them to be figments of the air or illusions of the lenses.
I think that they are a collection of opaque objects, coming together accidentally.
We often see that in one spot there can be counted 10 or more such tiny bodies of irregular shape that look like snowflakes, or tufts of wool, or flying moths.
They change places with each other, now separating and now congregating, but mostly right under the sun, about which, as their center, they move. But it is not therefore necessary to say that they are generated or decay.
Rather, they are sometimes hidden behind the body of the sun; at other times, though far from it, they cannot be seen because of their proximity to its immeasurable light.
For in the suns eccentric sphere there is established a sort of onion composed of various folds, one within another, each being studded with certain little spots, and moving; and although their movements seem at first to be inconstant and irregular.
nonetheless it is said to be ultimately observed that after a certain time the same spots are sure to return. This seems to me to be the most appropriate expedient that has so far been found to account for such phenomena, and at the same time to maintain the incorruptibility and ingenerability of the heavens. And if this is not enough, there are more brilliant intellects who will find better answers.
If what we are discussing were a point of law or of the humanities, in which neither true nor false exists, one might trust in subtlety of mind and readiness of tongue and in the greater experience of the writers, and expect him who excelled in those things to make his reasoning most plausible, and one might judge it to be the best.
But in the natural sciences, whose conclusions are true and necessary and have nothing to do with human will, one must take care not to place oneself in the defense of error; for here a thousand Demostheneses and a thousand Aristotles would be left in the lurch by every mediocre wit who happened to hit upon the truth for himself Therefore, Simplicio, give up this idea and this hope of yours that there may be men so much more leaned, erudite, and well-read than the rest of us as to he able to make that which is false become true in defiance of nature.
And since among all opinions that have thus far been produced regarding the essence of sunspots, this one you have just explained appears to you to be the correct one, it follows that all the rest are false. Now to free you also from that one – which is an utterly delusive chimera – I shall, disregarding the many improbabilities in it, convey to you but two observed facts against it.
One is that many of these spots are seen to originate in the middle of the solar disc, and likewise many dissolve and vanish far from the edge of the sun, a necessary argument that they must be generated and dissolved.
For without generation and corruption, they could appear there only by way of local motion, and they all ought to enter and leave by the very edge.
The other observation, for those not in the rankest ignorance of perspective, is that from the changes of shape observed in the spots, and from their apparent changes in velocity, one must infer that the spots are in contact with the sun’s body, and that, touching its surface, they are moved either with it or upon it and in no sense revolve in circles distant from it. Their motion proves this by appearing to be very slow around the edge of the solar disc, and quite fast toward its center; the shapes of the spots prove the same by appearing very narrow around the sun’s edge in comparison with how they look in the vicinity of the center.
For around the center they are seen in their majesty and as they really are; but around the edge, because of the curvature of the spherical surface, they show themselves foreshortened. These diminutions of both motion and shape, for anyone who knows how to observe them and calculate diligently, correspond exactly to what ought to appear if the spots are contiguous to the sun, and hopelessly contradict their moving in distant circles, or even at small intervals from the solar body.
This has been abundantly demonstrated by our mutual friend in his Letters to Mark Welser on the Solar Spots. It may be inferred from the same changes of shape that none of these are stars or other spherical bodies, because of all shapes only the sphere is never seen foreshortened, nor can it appear to be anything but perfectly round. So if any of the individual spots were a round body, as all stars are deemed to be, it would present the same roundness in the middle of the sun’s disc as at the extreme edge, whereas they so much foreshorten and look so thin near that extremity, and &e on the other hand so broad and long toward the center, as to make it certain that these are flakes of little thickness or depth with respect. to their length and breadth.
Then as to its being observed ultimately that the same spots are sure to return after a certain period, do not believe that, Simplicio; those who said that were trying to deceive you.
That this is so, you may see from their having said nothing to you about those that are generated or dissolved on the face of the sun far from the edge; nor told you a word about those which foreshorten, this being a necessary proof of their contiguity to the sun.
The truth about the same spots returning is merely what is written in the said Letters; namely, that some of them are occasionally of such long duration that they do not disappear in a single revolution around the sun, which takes place in less than a month.