counter-earth

Updated: May 18, 2025

This body, itself revolving about the central fire, was supposed to shut off the central light now and again from the sun or from the moon, and thus to account for certain eclipses for which the shadow of the earth did not seem responsible. It was, perhaps, largely to account for such eclipses that the counter-earth was invented. But it is supposed that there was another reason.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 1

Their count of the heavenly bodies, including the sphere of the fixed stars, seemed to show nine, and the counter-earth supplied the missing body. The precise genesis and development of this idea cannot now be followed, but that it was prevalent about the fifth century B.C. as a Pythagorean doctrine cannot be questioned.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 1

The Pythagoreans, on the other hand, attributed perfection to the number ten; but agreed in thinking that the perfect number must be somehow realized in the heavens; and knowing only of nine heavenly bodies, to make up the enumeration, they asserted “that there was an antichthon, or counter-earth, on the other side of the sun, invisible to us.” Even Huygens was persuaded that when the number of the heavenly bodies had reached twelve, it could not admit of any further increase.

John Stuart Mill - A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive

Anaxagoras also is said to have taken account of the hypothetical counter-earth in his explanation of eclipses; though, as we have seen, he probably did not accept that part of the doctrine which held the earth to be a sphere. The names of Philolaus and Heraclides have been linked with certain of these Pythagorean doctrines.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 1

The sun, it was held, is but a great mirror, which reflects the light from the central fire. Sun and earth alike revolve about this great fire, each in its own orbit. Between the earth and the central fire there was, curiously enough, supposed to be an invisible earthlike body which was given the name of Anticthon, or counter-earth.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 1

But just as often things in themselves and phenomena are conceived as similar to one another, as two sides of the same object, of which one, like the counter-earth of the Pythagoreans, always remains turned away from us, while the other is turned toward us, but does not reveal the true being of the object.

Richard Falckenberg - History of Modern Philosophy: From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time