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Old definitions, it is true, can not prevail against new knowledge: and if the Keplerian operation, as a logical process, be really identical with what takes place in acknowledged induction, the definition of induction ought to be so widened as to take it in; since scientific language ought to adapt itself to the true relations which subsist between the things it is employed to designate.
Old definitions, it is true, cannot prevail against new knowledge: and if the Keplerian operation, as a logical process, were really identical with what takes place in acknowledged induction, the definition of induction ought to be so widened as to take it in; since scientific language ought to adapt itself to the true relations which subsist between the things it is employed to designate.
As we shall see, Kepler's discovery, when treated in a Keplerian way, instead of leading to Newton, is found to be in full agreement with the very world-picture to which our own observations have led us.
But the general verdict of the present day seems to be that, although Galileo himself was treated with consideration, the hostility of the Church to the views of Copernicus placed it in opposition also to the true Keplerian system, and this led to unprofitable controversies.
It is only the more popular writers who give the idea that a revolution had been effected when Pythagoras' system was revived, and when Copernicus supported his view that the earth moves and is not fixed. It may be easy to explain the association of the name of Copernicus with the Keplerian system.
He did not carry out the idea himself, and it was left to the Englishman Gascoigne to produce the first instrument on this "Keplerian" principle, universally known as the Astronomical Telescope.
He had spent a laborious and active life in the exercise of the old methods, and could not bear to think that all the treasures which he had accumulated had lost their worth by the discovery of a new mine of richer ones." Until the time of Newton, all the telescopes in use were either of the Galilean or Keplerian type, that is, refractors.
Let us take into account the attraction which the sun exercises upon the moon, in other words, instead of two bodies, let us suppose three to operate on each other, the Keplerian ellipse will now furnish merely a rough indication of the motion of our satellite.
I had no computer at the time and no Keplerian elements. I mounted a small video camera in the centre of four 16-element Yagi antennas and rotated the elevation and azimuth motors until I could see the moon in the centre of the monitor in the shack. Of course when the sky was overcast I was out of business. Much later when I obtained a little Sinclair ZX80 computer life became easier.
Astronomers could then see at the first glance that in no part of the universe whether near or distant would the Keplerian laws suffice for the exact representation of the phenomena; that the simple, regular movements with which the imaginations of the ancients were pleased to endue the heavenly bodies would experience numerous, considerable, perpetually changing perturbations.
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